Easter Eggs - some easy tricks

Easter 2010

For the last few years, we've enjoyed doing our eggs a bit differently... and they come out so pretty, with a gentle sheen, that neighbors have asked whether they were real. ;) The secret? Plain old vegetable oil. It's a cheap ingredient and something most of us already have in our cupboards. We use it in two ways:

~~~~ After you've colored all the eggs you wish to do in a solid color, you can make swirly marbled eggs by adding 1 tbsp vegetable oil to each cup of egg dye. Stir briskly before quickly adding your egg (either a plain white one, or a dry, lightly colored one). Remove egg after just a few seconds, and lightly rub with a paper towel. Where the swirling oil touched the egg, no new color will appear - it will only appear where the color dye alone touched the surface. The whole surface of the egg will also have a gentle sheen from your paper-towel rub after dipping.

We made a batch of white/blue, white/pink, and pink/blue eggs at the end of our egg-dyeing a few years ago, and these were some of the prettiest Easter eggs we've ever made. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of those ones. :( But, you can see two swirled eggs from last year's bunch, in the back of the group in the picture at the top of this page. :)

~~~~ The other simple trick we do with vegetable oil is to simply pour a small amount (maybe 1/4 - 1/2 tsp) on a soft paper towel, and gently buff each solid-colored egg after they've been dyed and dried. This helps protect the eggs, brings out the color, and gives that pretty sheen as well. Add more oil to the paper towel as needed.

You can use these oil tricks on any kind of hard-cooked eggs, whether you dye them with commercial kits, liquid vegetable/vinegar dye, or any other kind of egg dyes. (This year I'm planning on using my paste food colors from cake decorating to make a bunch of egg dye colors we've never had before... should be fun, as long as this mama's not too sick! ;) )


May the love and peace of Our Risen Lord be with your family this Easter and always!


Good Friday, 2010 ~Timmy