Dyeing Easter eggs the natural way

Easter is around the corner. How could that happen again so fast? Time seems to fly buy, but all kids are kind of groggy and ready for the holidays. Our middle son stayed at home with me the last couple of days and we decided to start dyeing easter eggs. I love our “neon eggs” and the kids want to redo for sure the “surprise eggs” from last year. But as I am always eager to try something new, i wanted to do it the natural way this year.

So it was the perfect experiment to do, while hanging around together. We “cooked” natural colors out of red cabbage, beetroot, blueberries and grounded turmeric. I know it takes some time to get all the ingredients you need, to cut the veggies, to cook and let them cool down. But sometimes it is so great to slow down your life a bit. Not to take the fastest turn and take the artificial colors out of the supermarket and be done in 10 minutes. We both really enjoyed and as the colors stay good for some days, our other sons joined in to our dying action.

The results were quiet surprising. The beetroot with its bright red pinkish color turned out more or less brown. The eggs resemble to natural brown eggs and we were a bit disappointed by the beets ;-). The turmeric powder as well needed at least one night to dye the white eggs to a pale yellow. Beautiful but way not as bright as i thought it would be. I mean turmeric seems to stain everything otherwise… But red cabbage and blueberries turned out amazing. We got all different shades of blue and I love them all.  It totally depends on the time you let them sit in the color. Those who stayed all night got a deep blue – beautiful! And so interesting as the red cabbage is more or less a pinkish red while it is raw, then turns into a dark violett color while cooked and in the end the eggs turn out blue!

 

It is important to handle the eggs with caution while you get them out of the color. They need to sit and dry until the color is set, otherwise you’ll end having the color on your hands and white spots on the eggs…

Natural dyeing colors for easter eggs

• 1/2 red cabbage
• 2 fresh beetroots
• 200 g blueberries
• 2 tablespoons turmeric
• salt
• white wine vinegar
• bolides eggs (preferable white color)

To get the cabbage and beetroot color just cut the vegetables roughly, cover with water and let them (separately of course) boil for 45 minutes adding one tablespoon of salt. The blueberry don’t need to be crushed, just boil them with the salt for 45 minutes. Strain the color after cooling down completely.

Mix the turmeric powder with 300ml of water and bring to boil with the salt for as well 45 minutes. Strain after cooling through a tea sieve.

 

Add to every color a 1-2 teaspoons of white wine vinegar and start dyeing.

 

We took our time and had just one little glas of beetroot and turmeric, and a little bit more of red cabbage and blueberry color. So we needed to dye our eggs once at a time, but I found it great – slow down your life!