How to dye eggs this Easter?

Are you looking to make Easter fun & exciting this time around? Then I’ve got the perfect activity for you. When I was growing up in Latvia we didn’t have chocolate Easter eggs, we used real eggs for egg hunts. And I loved it. What made it even more exciting was to help my mum & nan dye some of the eggs the day before. Always using natural ingredients like onion skins, blueberries or chamomile. And today I am showing you how to do it.

Ingredients:

eggs (I used white eggs so all results are based on that) I will note which colours will work perfectly on brown eggs
sauce pans (depending how many colours you are going for)
dye ingredients (all listed below, choose which you want)
flowers, leafs, other foliage (optional)
old tights for egg wrapping (optional)

So let’s jump in.

How to dye eggs?

Put enough water in sauce pan that it will cover the colouring ingredients and make sure all eggs get submerged. Firstly bring the water & dye ingredients to boil and make sure it’s starting to produce colour. Add about a teaspoon of vinegar, as it will help create colour. Then add your eggs. I boil them for 20 minutes and then take them off the hob & leave them to a side (about an hour). Then rinse them off and leave them to dry. Once dry- add some oil onto a kitchen towel or cotton pad and oil the eggs. This will make them look nice & shiny.

Adding pattern to your Easter Eggs

As I said before, the thing in enjoyed most as a kid was making all different patterned eggs. This is how you do it- I gather different leaves, flowers, grasses anything fairly small you could wrap around or stick to an egg. I usually use old tights, cut them up in chunks to make little pouches. You then wet your egg, add the foliage, put the egg in your little pouch & tie it up. After dying these will come out in beautiful patterns.

This is totally optional.

Which ingredients did I use?

yellow onion
red onion
red cabbage
avocado
coffee
tea
spinach
beetroot
turmeric
blueberries

Which dyes worked the best?

Without a doubt both- yellow & red onions, came through with the darkest pigments. Which I knew they would, as I’ve used these before. The three surprises were red cabbage, blueberry & turmeric. (pictures above & below)

Which dyes worked, but weren’t as impressive?

There were dyes that worked, but I wasn’t as impressed with the result.

Avocado – turned out well, I do think I should have used more avocados to get more pigment- so maybe that’s something you could try. The overall tone was nice, just not as striking.

Tea – this just turned the white egg into a brown egg.

Coffee – it turned the white egg into a nice brown tone, but nothing too impressive.

Beetroot – considering how rich of colour the water was, the eggs didn’t get much of that dark pinky-red pigments. I was disappointed with this ones.

Ones that didn’t work?

I suppose I could move the beetroot down to here, but I feel that would be unfair as it did produce some colour onto the egg. One that really failed was spinach. I was skeptical about this as I did not think it will be producing enough green colour to colour the egg. In the photo you can see a very slight green tint.

Which dyes would work on brown eggs?

If you are using brown eggs, which I am most years, I would go with yellow & red onion skins. You will need at least 4-5 onions worth of skins to make sure it produces nice, rich tint. I would say blueberry would probably work a bit, but not that well. On the other two- red cabbage & turmeric- I am not sure if these would work and how they would turn out.

If you want to go for the 2 brighter colours, you can get a pack of white eggs from your local supermarket.

To not waste the eggs, make sure you use them for egg hunts and games (egg tapping, rolling down the slope or anything else you come up with).