Grace In Action April 2009--Natural Easter Egg Dye

When using natural dyes to color eggs, you can cook and color eggs at the same time.

1. Place raw, white-shelled eggs in a single layer in a pan. Cover with cold water. For best results, use filtered or distilled water.

2. Add a teaspoon of white vinegar.

3. Add the natural dyestuff. The more eggs you cook, the more dye you will need. If you want darker colors, use more dyestuff.

4. Bring water with eggs to a boil. Reduce heat. Simmer for 15 minutes.

5. Use a slotted spoon to lift eggs from dye to check for color.

6. Once you have desired color, pour off

If you have the desired color, pour off hot dye. Rinse eggs immediately and allow to stand in cold water, then drain and refrigerate eggs.

If you want a deeper color, save the strained hot dye liquid in a container. Once eggs are cooled, place them back into the dye and refrigerate several hours or overnight.

Experiment with the following dyes:

Red or pink: Use lots of red onion skins, cranberry juice, or frozen raspberries.
Orange: Yellow onion skins make a deep orange dye. Use the skins of two medium onions for four eggs.
Brown: Use chopped red beets, grape juice, or strong black coffee to make attractive brown eggs.
Yellow: To create bright yellow eggs, soak eggs overnight in dye made with ¼ teaspoon of saffron or about 3 tablespoons of turmeric.
Green: Use spinach, beet greens or carrot tops to make green eggs. Peelings of Yellow Delicious apples produce a yellow-green dye.
Blue: Red cabbage leaves make robin's-egg blue dye. One medium cabbage, chopped, will color a dozen eggs. After the 15 minutes of boiling, the eggs will still appear nearly white, but soak them for about six hours for the pretty blue. Use frozen blueberries to produce grey-blue. One cup of blueberries colors four eggs.
Deep Purple: Red wine makes beautiful burgundy eggs. Cover the eggs completely with undiluted red wine, and add the vinegar to the pot.
Experiment with soaking eggs in different dyes to create other colors: For example, try soaking eggs for 30 minutes in red cabbage leaves dye and then 30 minutes in red wine dye to make purple eggs.