Using All-Natural Foods to Dye Easter Eggs

Spinach, beets, and green tea...sounds like ingredients for a very healthy meal, right?  Well, they were...but they were also the ingredients used to naturally dye these beautiful Easter eggs.  They are very easy to make - it just took some time and patience.

Naturally-Coloured Easter Eggs:

Ingredients:

Hard-boiled Eggs (let them cool before dyeing)

Green tea (for yellow eggs; I used 5 packets for 3 eggs)

Beets (for pink eggs; I used 3 beets sliced in half for 3 eggs)

Spinach (for green eggs; I used 1/2 frozen package for 2 eggs)

water

white vinegar (this deepens the colour)

Directions:

1. In separate pots, boil water with beets (chopped in half or quarters), tea, or spinach.  You want enough water to cook your ingredients and then completely cover the eggs.

2.  Remove the beets (eat them in a salad!), tea bags, or spinach (side dish!)
3.  Put hard boiled eggs in separate containers (I used old yogurt tubs) and cover them completely in coloured water.
4. Add 3-4 tsps of white vinegar into each container.

5. Let the eggs soak overnight in the refrigerator.

6. The next day, place the eggs into an egg carton and let them dry in the refrigerator.

Notes:

• The boldest color came from the beets; the lightest color came from the spinach
• The easiest ingredient to use was the tea, especially because it was easy to add more packets to deepen the colour intensity
• Experiment with rubber bands before putting it into the coloured water to make a mosaic effect.
• To come up with ideas on what to use to colour the eggs, I just thought of anything I ate that stained my clothes...then I found this more comprehensive list online:  http://whatscookingamerica.net/Eggs/EasterEggDye.htm).  

Happy Hunting!