Your Kitchen Classroom: Backyard Egg Dye

Some years we make “natural dyed eggs” and some years we go for glitter and tie-dye.

This year we tried looking for natural dye in our own backyard — where we found a little yellow flower growing all over. The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center site identifies it as an Huisache Daisy, a member of the Aster family that blooms throughout Texas in the spring months.

Here’s what we did if you’d like to try it in your own Kitchen Classroom:

Start by picking flowers.* This activity, by the way, is only fun for so long. Settle for a saucepan full and be done with it.

Remove the leaves and stems — otherwise the green leaves mixed with yellow flowers could make the final color too muddy. Place the flowers into the pot, along with two white eggs, and add enough water to cover everything. Turn on the heat and bring to a boil.

The trick here is to expose the eggs to the flower “dye” for as long as possible — without rendering them inedible. That’s why we put the eggs in the pot from the beginning, rather than adding them after the water had boiled. We cooked everything for 15 minutes– which is about as long as an egg can be boiled before it’s overcooked.

Voila! Yellow Eggs. I was honestly surprised (and thrilled) at how very yellow they were. We loved them — and they tasted okay, too. Next time, we’ll try dying four eggs in the pot… and maybe some other flowers…

So I guess you could say our little experiment worked out really well — and took almost no time.

*And before I go, let me add that you should be careful with backyard flowers. Some are poisonous, and some are safe — and some are “look-alikes” (meaning, they look safe but aren’t). Use a field guide and in any case don’t let the kids eat anything until you look it up!

Anyway, Happy Easter!

HomeSchool Go 2 Postscript
What Can You Add to This Activity?

The “standard” natural dyes include things like onion skins, teabags, fresh beets, and cabbage. If you’d like to play around some more, you’ll find directions at Instructables and Hub Pages. Also, Mountain Rose Herbs has a nice page of directions for using (you guessed it) Herbs to color eggs.

Be safe and don’t drink the flower mush or boiling water — we added it straight to the Compost pile. Learn more about compost and how to create your own supply of it here.

Huisache Daisies are so named because they often grow near the Huisache, a thorny bush whose name actually means “many thorns” in the Aztec language. Its scientific name is Amblyolepis setigera and it’s also commonly called a butterfly or honey daisy. Choose a flower in your own backyard and research its name(s). The USDA site can help.

Learn more about flower taxonomy and try Classifying a favorite flower. (Backyard Nature — or most of the other sites on this page — will be helpful).

Try making a watercolor picture of some wildflowers in your area.

Alternatively, try a botanical illustration of a favorite flower.