Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs



Photo by Lisa Fulsom

In my quest in making mindful choices in my life, I decided this year to forgo the fizzy-neon colored pellets to color Easter eggs........instead, using all natural sources to color them.

I wanted to make a dry run of this before our annual egg-dying event with the family on the day before Easter.  I decided to use the following to color my eggs.  I put the ingredients for the color I wanted into each cup.  I also decided to use brown and white eggs, to see how much of a color difference I could achieve.  I didn't want to use too many different food sources, so I stuck with the 5 simple ingredients. 
 

Egg Color	Natural Colorant
Yellow	1-2 tsp. Ground Turmeric Powder
Purple	2 tbsp. Grated Beet/ 2 Tbsp. Chopped Red Cabbage
Green	1-2 tsp. Ground Turmeric Powder/2 Tbsp. Chopped Red Cabbage
Blue	½ c. frozen blueberries/2 Tbsp. Chopped  Red Cabbage
Orange	2 Tbsp. Ground Paprika
Pink	2 Tbsp. Chopped Cabbage

After the eggs were cooked, I placed them in a bowl of ice water.  I brought the pot of water that I used to cook the eggs back up to a boil.  Once the water was boiling, I used it to fill all the cups with each of the ingredients above about 2/3 full.  Then I added about a teaspoon of white vinegar to each cup.

Once the eggs were cooled, I added them to the different dyes.......and waited.  I learned this is not a quick process.  Concerned that the eggs were out of the refrigerator too long, I put all the cups of dye with the eggs in them in the refrigerator.  About two hours later, I checked the progress, and to my surprise, many of the eggs were dyed to a color of my liking. I took them out of the dye, and let them dry. 

Other than the time it takes to dye the eggs is a bit longer, I am so happy with the results.  The orange color was on the coppery brown side, but the blue and green color were very subtle and pretty. The pink colored egg came out as a soft pink. The brown eggs didn't give much of a color change, other than deeper shade of brown and gold, so I think the next time I will just use all white eggs.  The kids thought it was pretty cool that they were going to dye eggs using other food, so I told them to think up some foods we could use when we dye eggs on Easter Eve.

I am glad that I decided to be mindful about what methods to use in dyeing Easter eggs this year. 

And the bonus is I had zero waste:  the water I used to cook and cool the eggs went into watering my container garden outside, and the leftover dye and food wastes to make the dyes went into the compost.  It was a win-win situation in my book!