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Making Easter Egg Dye The Old Fashioned Way: Naturally

By Linda Eckhardt on April 13, 2011

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Here’s a great project for this weekend. Dye easter eggs with your kids and grand kids. Maria Springer, a pastry chef in Baltimore, has rediscovered a lovely way to dye those easter eggs. Using the skins of yellow onions, the luscious purple of cabbage leaves, beets, blueberries, red zinger tea, turmeric. All of these natural dyes make great easter eggs. For your kids, this holiday, give it a try. and thank Maria for the tip.

The method couldn’t be simpler. Boil the eggs. An easy way is to put a dozen eggs in a large pan, cover with water, raise water to a gentle boil and cook 9 minutes. Turn off the stove and let them cool.

Boil water, place eggs in a bowl, add the natural coloring agent, a teaspoon of white vinegar and the coloring agent and let the eggs soak. Natural dyes take longer. But that’s ok. You and the kids will have fun staring at the colors as they set up. The blues are the slowest and may take several hours. That’s ok. Teaches patience.

Remember to wear clothers you don’t care about, because as sure as god made little green apples, you’re gonna spill some of that lovely – and permanent – natural dye on yourself and your kids too.

Happy Natural Easter

And now what to do with all those easter eggs? After the Easter Egg Hunt, make this yummy egg dish for breakfast.

Goldenrod Eggs

6 large eggs, hard-boiled and peeled

2 tablespoons sweet butter

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

1 cup whole milk

cayenne to taste

6 pieces buttered toast

parsley sprigs

Cut the boiled eggs in half, remove the yolks and mash them. Set aside.

In a medium saucepan, make a roux by melting butter, adding flour and stirring until the flour is golden brown. Season to taste with salt, pepper and cayenne. Pour milk in and stir to make a thick white gravy. Add more milk as needed. Chop egg whites and add to this mixture.

To serve, Arrange toast on breakfast plates. Add a serving of egg white gravy and top with generous sprinkles of egg yolk. finish with parsley.

Now that’s a great way to welcome the spring.

About Linda Eckhardt

Linda West Eckhardt, is an award winning journalist, food writer, and nutritionist. Her more than 20 cookbooks have garnered prizes including the James Beard prize for the best cookbook for a text she wrote with her daughter, Katherine West DeFoyd, entitled Entertaining 101, Doubleday. Their follow-up book, Stylish One Dish Dinners, Doubleday, was also nominated for a James Beard prize. Their next book, The High Protein Cookbook, Clarkson Potter, remains a best seller after 12 years. That book was designed to accompany low carb diet plans. Her ground-breaking book, Bread in Half The Time, Broadway Books, was named the Best Cookbook in America by the prestigious IACP, The Julia Child award. Her award winning radio work with Jennifer English, for a national show on the Food and Wine radio network, was nominated for a James Beard Prize for a show called, “I Know What You Ate Last Summer.”