Monday, March 26, 2012

Just-don't-call-them-Easter eggs

One of my fondest memories from childhood was dying Easter eggs and hoping my artistic creation would be chosen for the Passover seder plate.

It's a tradition I'm proud to share with my otherwise exclusively Jewish children, and I was even more excited to get coloring when I found this tutorial for dying eggs naturally.

Zoe, Ada and I hunted around the kitchen for color-rich items we could use for our eggs and tried to predict what the results would look like after the boiling and overnight soaking was done.

Because we have a limited number of unused glass jars (we use them for salad dressing, leftovers and simple syrup) and some eggs didn't survive Ada's enthusiastic drop into the pot, we didn't dye very many eggs. But those we did are so pretty it will be hard to decide which one to pick for the seder plate.

 In case you're interested, the blue eggs were made with blueberries; the reddish-brown came from black tea, coffee beans, a cinnamon stick and whole cloves. The light green eggs were the result of green tea and cilantro, and the bright yellow egg was tumeric and a carrot. We dried the eggs and polished them with mineral oil before putting them back in the fridge. Also, this photo doesn't really do them justice--the camera on my Samsung phone is such crap.