Mary Ann's Blog
Easter Treats To Dye For
April 5, 2025
It’s getting to be crunch time for making and decorating those Easter Bunny cookies and hard-boiled eggs. The dilemma is how to safely color them for the neighborhood Easter Egg Roll.
I am very suspicious of artificial food coloring and have eliminated using it, choosing instead to color and frost cookies and Easter eggs using natural foods.
Cranberry juice makes a really pretty pale pink frosting when mixed with confectioner’s sugar. Just a tad of cooked and pureed red beets (don’t tell the kids) results in red the shade of jolly Old Saint Nick’s suit and a pinch of powdered paprika or turmeric dissolved in a little warm water gives a nice sunny yellow shade. Fresh blueberry juice will give a nice hue to white hard-boiled eggs and if you like speckled looking eggs then wrap the eggs in some cheesecloth and simmer them in a pan of brewed teabags. I’m still working on perfecting a natural green color, though, remembering from my school days that mixing yellow and blue usually results in green. A tablespoon of beet powder dissolved in warm water is good too. And there is always the option of just making a white icing and forgetting about coloring altogether.
My cookies and hardboiled eggs may not have as much bling as their artificially colored counterparts, but they shine on their own as a wise baking decision when it comes to doing just a bit more to put natural back into the foods we prepare and enjoy. Happy Baking!
Get my recipe for Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies here.
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