Dying Easter Eggs With Food Dye and Crayons
A simple idea to easily dye easter eggs without a dye kit using drops of food coloring which creates a wonderfully bright dye color.
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Easter weekend looks different in 2020, that’s for sure. We are trying to avoid the stores, our church will be online, and we won’t be seeing our extended family, but I still want my kids to have some of our usual traditions. Easter baskets will still happen thanks to online shopping. We will still have an Easter brunch using some food items we already have in the freezer, an outdoor Easter egg hunt, and we still have a chance to dye Easter eggs.
I’ve always used one of those pre-packaged egg-dying kits, but this year I didn’t want to run out to the store just to get one. It’s crazy that running to the grocery store feels full of anxiety all of a sudden, isn’t it?
Did you know that there are instructions for dying easter eggs on the box your food coloring comes in? Maybe I’m the only one, but I had absolutely no idea! So we decided to try it, and you know what? It worked even better than the kits we usually buy, the food dye created the most vibrant colors! I don’t know if I’m ever going back to a store-bought kit again.
How to Hard Boil Eggs
This is my tried and true method for great hard-boiled eggs. Some people have great success in the instant pot but that method has never worked as well for me. Just make sure you don’t skip the ice bath, that’s a very important step to success. It makes the hardboiled eggs so much easier to peel.
- Bring a medium saucepan of water or a large pot of water to a boil, then gently lower the eggs into the water. There should be enough water to cover the eggs.
- Now that the eggs are in, lower the heat so that the water is at a gentle simmer. You don’t want a full rolling boil, just a tiny amount of bubbles. Cook for 13 minutes.
- When the eggs are finished cooking, drop the warm eggs into an ice bath for 5 minutes.
- Remove the eggs from the water and store them in the fridge until you are ready to dye them or eat them!
Ideas for Eating Hardboiled Eggs
- Make egg salad – chop the hard-boiled eggs and mix them with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper.
- Slice them and use them as a protein on a salad. Cobb salad, Ceasar salad – it’s delicious and makes a light dish more filling.
- Make deviled eggs – This is a great Easter dinner side dish
- Eat them as a quick snack. My kids like them with a little salt or even hot sauce. (Yes, my kids like hot sauce) I find that my kids eat more hardboiled eggs around Easter than any other time of year. The colors add to the appeal for sure.
- Some potato salad recipes use hard-boiled eggs in the recipe. Plan that as a side dish in the week following Easter to use up the eggs.
Dying The Eggs
What you’ll need:
- Boiling or very hot water
- White Vinegar
- Food Coloring – a few different colors including primary colors (gel food coloring works well too!)
- Hard-boiled eggs – white eggs work best, brown eggs won’t take the color as well.
- Coffee mugs, drinking glasses, or wide-mouth mason jars
- A large slotted spoon or a whisk; for dipping and retrieving the eggs – I will never go back to a wire egg holder that comes in the dye kit. The whisk and spoon were so much easier for small kids to manage!
- Paper towel to catch an extra liquid that is dripping off of the eggs
- Newspaper or a plastic tablecloth to cover the work surface
- Wax Crayons – including a white crayon
In a mug or glass pour 3/4 cup boiling water. To the cup of water add 1 teaspoon of vinegar, and 20-25 drops of food coloring to create the dye bath.
We used regular coffee mugs, spoons, and a whisk for dipping the eggs. You could also use disposable cups if you want a really easy cleanup. If you use larger cups with more water increase to 1 tablespoon of white vinegar, and add about 5-10 more food coloring drops to get the desired color. You can even make your own unique colors by mixing the colors.
After we dyed the eggs and they dried, we let the kids color the eggs with crayons. They chose to draw pictures, make designs, and write everyone’s name so we all had a personalized egg. It was a great time! This was such a fun activity, the boys really enjoyed finding creative ways to decorate each egg.
Happy Easter to you and your family!
Here’s the Finished Product: