Naturally Dying Easter Eggs

Did you know you can dye eggs using igredients that can be found in your kitchen? I thought this was so cool and wanted to try it out for myself to see how it works!

There are actually a ton of things you can use to create a natural dye, but for me, I tried out purple cabbage, red wine, yellow onion peels, blueberries and Tazo’s passion tea!

Boil your eggs. I always allow my pot of water to come to a rolling boil, then remove from heat and add my eggs. I then cover the pot and let them sit for 12 minutes.

You then want to boil each ingredient in water seperately to make a dye. Once the dye is a few shades darker than you want your egg to end as you are ready to dunk the boiled eggs. ( I should have added vinegar into my mixture, as I read in hindsight that that creates a deeper, stronger dye color.) I tried making the cabbage dye with two seperate methods: one method is boiling the cabbage plain to yield a blue, while the other method adds a teaspoon of vinegar and yields a reddish-pink!

Depending on your desired color, and how well the egg is taking the dye, saturation time will vary. The longer an egg is left in the dye, the richer the color. My red wine eggs turned the quickest after only 10 minutes, while my cabbage and vinegar mixture did not take at all after sitting well over an hour. I think I may have added too much vinegar by accident.

I was surprised that the color took differently than I had originally expected. The tea picked up a beautiful gray tone (when I expected a pink), as well as my blueberries (I was using really old blueberries, so I am curious what these would have looked like had I used fresh produce!)

There are so many other ingredients that can be used: tumeric, coffee, beets and spinach, just to name a few! I am eager to try a few more of these, and also see how adding vinegar into my boiling water and ingredients will affect the color of the dye (I have read this will make a deeper color, so definitely worth a try!) I counted this as a learning experience and had so much fun giving it a try!

Would you try to dye eggs naturally?

Talk soon,

xx, Lanna

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