Egg-Cellent Easter Egg Hacks

What really makes Easter pop are brightly colored eggs. Not only do they look great, but creating them is a fun activity as well. If you want to dye eggs with young kids, then one idea that's food-safe is to use a colorant that comes from food, isn't toxic in any way, and isn't going to create a huge mess if it's spilled either. One method you may not have tried yet is using Kool-Aid to color Easter eggs. 

First, hard boil some eggs. While some instructions say that you should peel the eggs before dyeing them, you can also leave the shells on as usual — this trick works either way. Put the eggs in a bowl and in other containers add one Kool-Aid flavor sachet and a cup of warm water. You can use two packets of yellow Kool-Aid or a yellow packet mixed with a little orange, to get a stronger color. To make green, you can mix a quarter of a teaspoon of the blue lemonade flavor with an entire lemonade packet. You can then use the rest of the blue powder in another bowl, and so on. Dunk one egg at a time into the colored water, and leave for up to five minutes, depending on the color intensity you're trying to achieve. Dry the eggs on a baking sheet, covered in a paper towel. Remember, once you store your Kool-Aid eggs in the refrigerator, they should stay fresh to eat for a week!

So you want to dye some eggs for Easter, but no matter how you do it, you always end up with colored fingers. Does this pretty much sum up your experience? There must be a simple hack, you think, since it's not rocket science, is it? You'd be right, and it's not some far-out idea either. In fact, the eggs-act solution lies right under your nose — well, in the kitchen utensil drawer, anyhow.

Southern Living highlights a great way of coloring eggs, which is so darn simple, it's not surprising it's been shared by other tipsters like Parent Hacks. Grab a wire balloon whisk, and widen one of the spaces before popping in your egg. The metal will spring back into shape to create a cage for your egg — and the perfect tool for dipping into some dye without getting it all over your hands. The key is to make sure the dye, which can be made from food coloring, water, and vinegar, is deep enough and in a container that's wide enough so that you can dunk the whole egg and whisk basket. Leave it there for five minutes, and use gloves if you want something to stop your hands getting stained as you get the egg out from inside the whisk. This method sure beats — no pun intended — balancing eggs on a spoon or dipping fingers into dye!

You may have heard of egg fried rice, but have you heard of rice dyed eggs? Yes, that's eggs dyed using rice, which, according to an eggs-planatory Instructables hack and a SurpriseFunTV video, makes coloring Easter eggs far less messy. It also adds a cool speckled look to the shell. All you need are some hard-boiled eggs, a cup of uncooked rice, food coloring, and resealable sandwich bags. You can add vinegar to the dye to make the color fix more if you like, and wear plastic gloves too. 

Start off by adding a quarter of a cup of rice to one of the bags and around 10 drops of food coloring, along with a drop of vinegar if you're using it. Add an egg to the bag and shake it, covering the shell with the colored rice and coloring one egg at a time. You can add in more dye after coloring each egg, but make sure to add the color to the rice and not when the egg is in the bag. You can experiment with the amount of color you prefer. 

You can also try putting the rice in a plastic cup instead. You then add the dye and egg, before putting cling wrap over the top with a rubber band securing it in place. You then shake the contents. This method creates a more distinct speckled pattern.

All that glitters is not gold, but a crystal Easter eggs-permient hack by Science Notes is priceless! You don't need actual gems either, but something more likely to be on hand: salt. You can also use Epsom salts, but only if you want your egg to be purely decorative and not edible. First, fill a bowl with boiling water, adding a few drops of food coloring. Next is where the science bit comes in. To create just the right solution, add salt and stir with a spoon until you can see some of the crystals forming on it. You're now ready to crystallize your egg and bring a little sparkle to your Easter celebrations.

Put a hard-boiled, hollowed-out, or fresh egg into the salty, colored water, leaving it for at least an hour or even longer — up until the next day. Without disturbing the liquid too much, you can gently turn the egg from time to time, so that it gathers more crystals around it. Once you have the desired effect — which should be an egg with sparkly crystals stuck to it — fish it out and let it dry. You can add more sparkles by then repeating this process using a new bowl of water with color and salt added. A good tip is that once you've made the salty water, heat it so more of the salt dissolves, allowing you to add even more salt for better results.

There's something wonderfully timeless about the idea of Easter eggs and handicrafts that involve dyeing eggs can also be done in a traditional way too. Modern-day TikToker @the_vintagearean, who portrays a vintage way of life, makes eggs-traordinary Easter eggs using red cabbage, while adding a surprising design element using fresh herbs.

Hard boil some eggs, while also boiling shredded red cabbage in a separate pot. Meanwhile, cut pieces of cloth, perhaps from an old t-shirt, into squares that are big enough to wrap around an egg. Pour the boiled cabbage water turns purple, pour it into three separate jars with lids. Next, place an herb leaf, such as parsley, onto the middle of three squares of cloth and place a boiled egg on top of each of these. Wrap the cloth around the eggs, securing at the top with some string or twine. Add a tablespoon of vinegar to one of the jars only, and the same amount of baking soda to a different jar, leaving one jar with just the cabbage juice. Each creates a different color intensity, while the herb creates a non-dyed motif. Put the cloth-wrapped eggs, along with a plain hard-boiled egg, into each jar. Close for 24 hours. Take them out, unwrap the eggs that are in the cloth, and dry them all on a wire rack as you marvel at your old-fashioned decorations. 

Unless you're a fabulous artist and have a lot of time to paint beautiful designs, you may be interested in this artistic-looking Easter egg hack from Color Made Happy. All you really need, apart from eggs, are some temporary tattoos and a damp sponge. While you can add designs to dyed eggs, there's nothing to say you can't add designs to white eggs if you want the colorful artwork to really stand out. 

Simply cut the tattoo so that it fits on the surface of the egg, whether it's a single design or a pattern that's going around the egg. Take off the layer protecting the tattoo and put the design onto the egg. Sponge over the back of the tattoo, holding it there for around half a minute. Take your time peeling off the back, revealing the egg with the tattoo transferred onto the shell. Glitter tattoos and metallic ones can create a more eye-catching design look, too, which could work well for a party. If you're tattooing lots of eggs, you can create a theme with matching or complementary tattoo styles.

It looks like an egg, but when you crack it open, it's actually a moist chocolate sponge cake with a gooey, chocolaty center. It doesn't get much more eggs-hilarating than that! Not only do you have a surprise element, but you also end up with a delicious cake to eat up as well — if you follow this Scrumdiddlyumptious hack, that is.

Pierce the shells of 10 eggs, blowing out the contents of two in one bowl and the eight remaining in another. Rinse the eggshells and leave in brine for half an hour before drying them in an oven set at 125 F. Take them out and turn up the oven to 360 F. Whisk up the two eggs, adding in a pinch of salt and 3.5 ounces of sugar to create a batter. Gently melt 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate and 2.5 ounces of butter in a bain-marie, before adding to the batter. Sieve and mix in a tablespoon and a half of cocoa powder and 2 ounces of flour. Add a drop of oil to the eggshells, swirling around to cover the inside and pipe in the batter mix to three-quarters full. Bake for 20 minutes. Cut off any cake that's come out of the shell and clean the outside with a damp cloth. Next, put a hole in the cake with a skewer, filling with Nutella for a scrumptious soft-center treat.

If you're a fan of crafts, you definitely have some washi tape on hand. It's tape, yet unlike some tapes it's easy to tear and cut, which makes this next Easter egg hack perfect for younger kids. The Kitchen Table Classroom suggests that decorating eggs using this tape a great way to eggs-perience a mess-free, colorful handicraft that's not so complicated either. It can also teach little ones about color and design, inspire their creativity, and get them to try cutting out different shapes.

A good preparation step that grown-ups can do before unleashing the decorators is to create tape lengths of up to 8" for each tape design, sticking one end to a table so that young crafters can cut or tear off from these pre-cut strips. This helps to prevent young creatives from using too much tape, and makes it far more manageable for them to decorate their eggs, while cutting down on waste. Using hard-boiled eggs is advised for this decorative method, too.

It's possible that a bouncing, glow-in-the-dark egg may not be your first thought when it comes to Easter decorations. That's because you're not the Crazy Russian Hacker, who demonstrates how to create eggs-tra terrestrial style Easter eggs. Essentially, this hack consists of creating rubbery eggs by adding eggs to white vinegar. However, instead of adding in food coloring, you'll add the contents of a yellow highlighter pen instead. After two days, wipe any remaining eggshell away. If you stick the finished product under a UV light, it will glow. Not only that, but you can also bounce the glowing egg too, although not too hard, as it's still a soft, raw egg inside!

Speaking of eggs that light up in the dark, a great idea for older kids is a nighttime Easter egg hunt. Another way to create glowing eggs is to add glow sticks inside plastic eggs so they light up any Easter party. Sprinkle Some Fun suggests painting eggs with blacklight reactive paint and giving egg hunters a blacklight torch so that in darkness the eggs are totally hidden. Remember, none of these are edible hacks, so you may want to have some chocolate eggs on hand as a surprise prize, too!

Eggs-cellent Easter egg hacks are ultimately about having fun and getting creative, and trying out different ways to bring some color into the world to celebrate springtime!