Tom and I have chickens and those chickens lay brown eggs. Not really suitable for coloring. But we also have Ducks who lay white eggs. But I've never dyed a duck egg. The shells are different, will it hold coloring? Yes. The other nice thing about Duck eggs is that the shell is hard to crack making them hold up better to repeated assault.
Since I'm not the one to drop $4.00 on a Paas kit, and maybe I want to color eggs at other times of the year, I decided to learn how to make eye dye with stuff I already have at home. Yes, I have synthetic food coloring. But I also have natural foods to color eggs with, beet juice comes to mind and Turmeric. I'll try those out on another day. But here's what I learned today.
10 drops of synthetic food coloring
1 Tablespoons of white vinegar
1 cup of boiling water
Submerge eggs in dye bath for 3-5 minutes.
For tye-dye eggs mix 1 Tablespoon of oil in the dye bath. Special note: just dunk tye-dye eggs, do not roll them or it won't work, I learned the hard way.
And lastly if you want special colors like purple and orange you are better off following the color directions on the back of the box than dunking in two different colors, I did not get good results. And leaving the egg in the red dye for fewer minutes will not get you pink, coloring yellow and then red did a better job of this. I can't wait to try out natural foods.
We use to use food coloring instead of a kit when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteYou can also make patterns on the eggs by using a warm crayon (almost melting, but not runny) to draw on the egg before dunking it in the dye. A regular crayon works, but not well.
After dunking the egg and letting it dry you can then rub off the crayon and dunk it in another color. The part that was previously covered by crayon wax will absorb the new color.
I was just talking about possibly writing an article about dying eggs for Easter. We haven't dyed eggs with Abigail before.
ReplyDeleteLove it!!!!!!!
ReplyDelete