Well, Easter is going to look a little different this year isn’t it y’all? As crazy as it is to say “a few weeks ago” literally two weekends ago I got so down and overwhelmed with our “new normal” that I cried for two days. But since then I’ve really been trying to use this time in isolation to make memories, get new things started, get old “to do” items finished and to just give myself a BREAK mentally and not put so much pressure on myself. So in the spirit of all that jazz, we are trying something NEW (to us) and Naturally Coloring Easter Eggs with stuff we found in our kitchen!
prep work
To prep for coloring our eggs we mashed up some of the fruits and veggies mixed with a little bit of water. Just to encourage the natural color of them to come out more when boiling. Other than that, they didn’t need any other prep work!
steps
Since our eggs needed to be boiled, as well as the fruits and veggies, I put everything into a pot together, then filled each pot with enough water to completely cover the eggs. Let the water, eggs and produce boil for about 15 minutes, check how colored your eggs are after that. If they are getting good color you can go ahead and turn the burner off, BUT DON’T REMOVE THE POT FROM THE HEAT! Let everything come to room temperature on it’s own before removing the eggs, or leave in longer, for darker color. Once your desired color is reached, or it seems like the eggs won’t hold anymore color you can take them out.
So at this point I had all four of my pots full, boiling and my eggs were looking good… well, some of them were…
fixing a fail… or two
I first checked the saturation of the eggs about five minutes into them boiling, after 15 minutes I checked again and noticed that the spinach and cranberry eggs were… well… not colored…
In an effort to not let these go to waste I started adding more to the mixes that didn’t seem to be working. So to the cranberry I added about 1/3 cup of my blueberry mixture, a few onion skins, turmeric and some coffee grounds. And to the spinach one, I added a handful of frozen kale and a spoonful of turmeric. AND IT WORKED!
I could almost instantly see the change! The cranberry one’s ended up turning brown, which I didn’t anticipate, I was thinking it would turn more of a pink/mauve color. But the green turned out perfect! I think the kale was the key!
After each pot boiled for about 15 minutes, and the color looked almost the way I was wanting, I turned off the burner and let them sit for about 4 hours before finally removing them, quickly rinsing them off and them being finished!
And that’s it y’all! So easy! There are so many other things I’d love to try to color eggs, but I just didn’t already have them on hand. I’ve heard red cabbage, beets, hibiscus tea, red onion, paprika and more! Below are some pins for Pinterest if you’d like to save this for later!
I would have NEVER thought to do this! What a brilliant idea! Love how rich the colors turned out too. Great job!