CELEBRATIONS: Red Cabbage Dyed Easter Eggs

It wouldn’t be spring without Easter eggs and every year I try out a new technique for making eggs. This all natural dye technique has been on my list for ages.




At first glance, you would assume these colors were achieved by soaking them in blueberry juice. But these were made by using red cabbage.





Red cabbage is inexpensive and one head of cabbage produces tons of cabbage shreds to make a vat of dye. All you need to do is chop up your cabbage and add it to water with a little vinegar. For this vat, I used about a half of the cabbage to one quart of water. There was just enough water to cover 8 eggs. I would recommend the entire cabbage and a little less than 2 quarts of water to dye one dozen eggs.


Add the cabbage and one tablespoon vinegar to the water and bring to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes and then remove the cabbage using a strainer. Add your hard-boiled eggs . The vinegar sets the color and helps it adhere to the eggs. Depending on how deep you want the color, leave your eggs in the dye for 15 minutes or even over night.


Here’s where it gets interesting. If you add a a little baking soda to the dye, the color turns intensely blue. I thought this would be a great idea to get a darker blue egg. But I was wrong. The deep purple dye (without the baking soda) dyed the eggs a darker blue and the blue dye (with the baking soda) gave them a lighter hue. I ended up leaving my eggs in the dye for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours.


I think the bottoms are multi-colored because I was using the same spoon to stir them around the little cups. I think it adds interest to the eggs.

I love how pretty they look. I used hard-boiled eggs so we’ll be eating these. If you want to use these for decorating just blow out the eggs before dying them. Consider adding speckles to the blue eggs with a little dark brown craft paint. Just add some paint to a stiff brush and splatter the eggs.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Happy Spring!!