Easter is just around the corner and I want to share some easy dye free recipes for my friends who would like to avoid those chemical dye kits sold at the stores. These kits are super easy to use and very convenient but they are loaded with artificial food dye. Dyes like red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 1. For many kids even touching these dyes can have negative effects and the dye does leach into the hard boiled egg so you need to know that if you plan on eating them . When we decided to forgo products with artificial food dye in them, we soon realized it includes these easter egg dye kits.
Here is my list of natural products that can be used to dye Easter eggs this holiday season. Please share your recipes too!
Pinkish Red - Beet juice and vinegar
Purple Blue - Handful of blueberries
Light Yellow - Dandelions! If these yellow beauties have sprouted their bright yellow heads in your lawn by Easter time, grab a handful and add some hot water to steep! Also turmeric will make a pale yellow.
Brown - Coffee or tea
Reddish Orange - Onion skins boiling ( boil the eggs with the onion skin for this effect )
Green - Spinach
Blue - Red Cabbage
Hard boil the eggs and let them cool. For each color, boil 3 cups of water, 2 tsp vinegar and one of the ingredients for 30 minutes.
There are probably dozens of ways to make natural colors and I would love to hear them all!
Hey! It was nice seeing you stop by my place, thanks!
ReplyDeleteI haven't done Easter eggs in years, I miss them! Definitely not a tradition in Spain... I'd never thought of the dye issues. I'm not fond of hard-boiled eggs so we frequently ended up tossing more than we ate. Although I remember my dad teaching us a technique to empty the eggs out first and just using the shell. I might have to look that one up... ;o)
@cc: I have heard about that technique to empty the eggs first. I'm afraid we would have many broken eggs around here using that method but maybe we'll give it a go for a few. I think you pin prick both ends of the egg and blow through one of them and the yolk comes out the other end. Maybe one end needs to be bigger...not sure about this. I'll have to look it up.
ReplyDeleteI just found your blog from the food dye diaries blog. My kids and I are dye free too. Just yesterday I found out there are some natural dye kits as well. One I found on etsy, and the other is called eco-eggs. I bought a set from luckyvitamin.com. I was excited to find it. I'm glad there is still a safe way for my kids to get to dye easter eggs.
ReplyDeletehi Holly, Thanks for the follow! I will definatley check out those sources you mentioned to find "dye free" dye kits! And, I'm heading over the food dye diary blog. So happy to when I meet other people who share our same path!!
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