A while ago I posted about radmegan’s gorgeous natural egg dyes. I know our egg dying holiday in the US was a few weeks ago, but nature seems to be in a spring celebration mood here in Seattle with an explosion of flowers! Sunshine! Baby animals! So last Sunday I tried my hand at some egg dying of my own.
For the sake of pure color I decided to use some white eggs I had gotten during a cupcake-making eggless emergency. For dye materials I gathered plants from our yard or used common in-season ingredients like cabbage and carrots. Getting good color turned out to be tricky; heat changes hues in strange ways.
First I gathered my ingredients.
Then I simmered each pot with 2 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar for about 10 minutes.
Things got a little messy and a little funky. Have you ever smelled boiling dandelion flowers before? Cabbage-fennel-tulip-stew? Me neither. It was an experience.
Then I let the pots cool and carefully transferred them to jars and let them sit for a day (or two… I got busy). It’s hard to see in the photo, but I labeled each jar with chalk pens I have around the house for just this sort of quick labeling. They write on plastic, glass or ceramic and wipe off with one or two rubs of a finger.
And then I carefully fished the eggs out, let them dry, and rubbed them with vegetable oil.
Pretty cool. I’m most surprised by the turquoise from the red kale.
Here’s the exact plants and herbs I used:
2 carrots, grated
3 tablespoons chili powder
hoping for: orange
actually got: spotty light brown
Big handful of fennel fronds (we have some sort of fennel or anise plant growing like a weed out front)
hoping for: green
actually was: ochre brown
2 cups dandelion flowers
hoping for: yellow (c’mon, I figured this for an easy win)
actually got: light pea green
4 cups Red Russian kale stems, leaves and flowers
hoping for: green, or even pink because to the stems
actually got: turquoise?!
4 leaves red cabbage
hoping for: blue!
actually got: blue! (I cheated, I knew this would happen.. but dye water turning out purple had me curious anyway)
petals from 4 pink tulips
skins from 2 red onions
hoping for: red or pink
actually got: olive green
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