Seriously…

I have been hard boiling eggs for years, but I tend to only do it a few times year, usually when Easter comes around, and each time I end up having to do a quick online search for the correct cooking time for the eggs because in the interim I always forget.  Last year I did my same cursory search, and reconfirmed on multiple sites that nine minutes is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to boil your eggs for.  I even went through the whole rigamarole of making sure my eggs where at room temperature when I put them in, the pot was at a steady boil, and I trusted Alexa with setting my nine minute timer.  Unfortunately, my eggs turned out somewhere between hard boiled and raw.  I wouldn’t even give some of them the label of soft boiled.  The worst part, other then having no idea on where I went wrong – the one I tested was perfectly hard boiled – was that I spent the good part of an afternoon delicately hand decorating them for our yearly hard boiled egg contest.  This contest, passed down through the Lithuanian side of the family, involves tapping hard boiled eggs together to see who’s egg is the strongest.  Family members spend the weeks leading up to Easter testing their eggs.  Being able to select the strongest eggs is a point of familial pride.  Needless to say, it was a somewhat unpleasant surprise when my “hard boiled” eggs cracked leaking raw, slimy, half cooked egg all down the contestant’s hand… Opps… It would have probably been funny, if I had done it on purpose, but nope, this mess was all, unintentionally, down to me and my somehow lacking hard boiling egg skills.

This year I’ve decided to play it safe and pressure cook my eggs in the instant pot which has a preprogrammed egg cooking setting.  Hopefully I can avoid another raw egg fiasco. I’d also like to share with you the egg decorating I did last year, and am looking to repeat again this year.  It’s a simple dye job with hand decorated Spring inspired motifs done with non-toxic metallic paint markers.

Materials:

• a dozen Hardboiled Eggs (white egg will produce brighter colors then brown egg, but they are also more fragile)
• Red, Blue, and Yellow Gel Food Coloring
• 1 cup White Vinegar
• ~2 cups Boiling Water
• 3 short Glasses
• 3 Spoons
• have Paper Towels on hand for the rapid clean up of spilled or dribbled dye
• Non-toxic Metallic Paint Markers

Instructions:

1. Pour 1/3 cup on vinegar into the bottom of each glass.
2. Distribute the boiling water evenly among the glasses.  You want them filled enough to fully submerge an egg.
3. Primary color dye:
   1. Use the spoon to gently drop an egg into the dye bath, and allow it to sit there for 15 seconds to a minute depending on how darkly you want your eggs colored.
   2. Use the spoon gently lift the egg out of the water.
   3. Set the egg in an egg carton to dry, and place the next egg into the dye bath.
4. Secondary color dye:
   1. At this point you should have a selection of blue, yellow, and red/pink eggs.  This is were you can introduce a range of secondary colors (purple, orange, and green) to your eggs.
      1. Red + Yellow = Orange
      2. Blue + Yellow = Green
      3. Red + Blue = Purple
5. Allow your eggs to dry.
6. Use the metallic markers to hand decorate your eggs.