Perhaps like me, you’ll be having family around your table for Easter Sunday…adult children or grandchildren who love Easter eggs. You love having a large bowl of pretty pastel eggs as a centerpiece/menu item for brunch. But you don’t have any small kids around at the moment to help dye eggs.
With other preparations to make for the holiday, you’re much to busy to line up small cups of dye and dip eggs all afternoon. So what are you to do?
Having found myself with this dilemma on more than one occasion, I wisely adopted my mother Margaret Owings’ shortcut for easy Easter eggs.
You simply dye the eggs while simultaneously hard boiling them. All that is required is pots in which to boil water, a tablespoon, some food coloring and some vinegar.
Easter Eggs the Easy Way
Three dozen eggs (Grade A large)
Three large pots filled three-quarters full with water
Three tablespoons white or cider vinegar per pot
Thirty or more drops of yellow, red, blue or green McCormick’s food coloring (can mix other colors according to directions on box)
Add three teaspoons of vinegar to each pot of water and turn on the burners. Remove eggs from carton and drop carefully in the pots. Squeeze in approximately thirty drops of food coloring per pot depending on how deep you want the color to be. Bring the water to a boil, then lower it to a simmer and cover each pan with a lid. Let the eggs simmer for 15 minutes.
Extract eggs. You can submerge them in cold water for easier peeling but I usually place them back in the egg cartons to cool before arranging them in a bowl or basket. I’ll serve them with homemade muffins or quick bread with juice and coffee for Easter brunch.