Martha Mondays: Easter Eggs
Posted by in Holidays
Thanks to Teresa at Homemade Iowa Life for picking this project – the assignment was to make Easter eggs from the selection on Martha’s site. I made the silk tie dyed eggs last year (#12 in that slide show if this link does’t take you directly there) and my only regret is that I used hard boiled eggs, so all my hard work was thrown out! They were gorgeous and a great project – I highly recommend them. This year I decided it was time to try blowing out eggs. The first
Making the hole
challenge was the eggs. I only buy organic, and they only come in brown, so we ended up buying regular eggs and dumping the contents (wasteful, and I am ashamed).
I read Martha’s instructions for this and her method is to go buy a egg blowing contraption. I decided I didn’t want to invest in that so we decided to do it the old fashioned way. I read some other online
Blowing the egg
instructions about how to do this yourself and we got started. Mr. MarthaAndMe went first since his hands actually do what his brain tells them to do. He used a cake tester and scratched and scratched and scratched at one end until he had a hole. He did the same on the other end and moved the cake tester around to make the hole bigger. Then you swirl the cake tester around inside to break up the yolk.
Washing the egg
Hold the egg over a bowl, big hole down and blow through the small hole. Success! Next, submerge the egg in a bowl of water and keep blowing water out until it runs clear. Set it back in the egg carton to completely dry.
When I tried it, I couldn’t get the egg to come out. When Dude Martha tried it, his holes ended up uneven and shattered looking. Mr. MarthaAndMe decided that there had to be an easier way. He’s a man, so that meant power tools. He came back with his drill and used a small bit for the small hole and a slightly bigger one for the bigger hole. He stood the drill up
Here come the power tools
and held it stationary and then moved the egg towards the drill bit so he could control it. This worked well the first time. The next few broke, but then he got back on track. Some eggs broke as they were being blown. Out of a dozen eggs, we ended up with 8, 3 of which had nicely shaped holes. Not such a great ratio. It was fun to try this though since I had always wondered how hard it was (pretty hard). I also enjoyed making comments about Mr. MarthaAndMe sucking eggs which made him almost choke as he was trying to blow one out, so that was a highlight as well.
The next day we colored the eggs. I decided to try Marbelizing Eggs. The 
directions say to color the egg first in one bowl then in another bowl, mix up the dye and add oil. Swirl the oil and roll the egg through it to get the marbelized effect. Total disaster. No marbelizing happened at all. None. We tried adding more dye, more oil, etc and nothing working. So Dude Martha and Mr. MarthaAndMe then began to experiment (shudder). Mr. MarthaAndMe has memories of making these kinds of eggs as a kid and tried to recreate it by
Marbelized result - not so marbelized
adding drops of food coloring to vinegar and water, not mixing it, and quickly rolling the egg through it. It sort of worked. Then he started dripping food coloring directly on the egg and rolling it in the water. That worked the best and resulted in the more brightly colored eggs. Dude Martha did the same thing and the eggs really did turn out quite vibrant and interesting.
This was fun, but was not as successful as I’d hoped. I do like having blown out eggs to work with so 
that if you’re lucky enough to create something beautiful, you can keep it. That being said, I think I’ll go back to the Broadway Market next year (see yesterday’s post) and buy some more professionally made eggs for $10!
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I thoroughly enjoyed this post! It took me back to my childhood, when I used to make Easter eggs. There’s a special smell that goes with the experience, part vinegar, part dye, and it came right back as I was reading your adventures in Easter-eggland. The color of that turquoise egg is magnificent! I was wondering, during the paragraph about your husband’s using his drill, how people succeeded in emptying eggs 100 years ago, because I’m sure they succeeded. Maybe it meant going through more eggs and throwing some out? Or, perhaps the eggshells were less fragile back then and the whole task was easier? I remember trying to do it au naturel one year, and using beet skins to get pink eggs, instead of dye. This was my mother’s idea. She claimed people in Russia did it this way, although I don’t think she really knew that, since it was my dad who was Russian, not her!! Happy Easter to you and your family!
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I guess people definitely must have used vegetable dyes originally! That would be fun to try.
Nice post, with so much info! It reminds me of my grandma blowing out eggs. She had a Easter Tree that she would hang her decorated hollow eggs on. I even have one she decorated for Christmas for my tree. They can last forever with care.
Beautiful. I miss dyeing eggs. Here in NZ most all of the commericial eggs are brown. Not much fun in dyeing those.
I agree. Apparently there is a way to fade the brown color so you can then color them, but I don’t remember how to do it – plus it’s another step.
I have one too! Here’s my post about it last year http://marthaandme.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/easter-tree/
I saw in April’s Sunset Mag. that, if you color brown eggs with regular colors, they turn vibrant versions of the colors. The pics were beautiful and the eggs were jewel colored, but they don’t seem to have it online.
I am way too nervous to blow-out eggs. I’m not patient enough to fry them and I’m sure this would do-me-in for sure. I loved reading your post though. They turned out so pretty 🙂
Oh wow! That’s so cool. Now I want to try that. Maybe I’ll just do some hardboiled ones this week. Thanks for sharing!
If it were not for Mr. MarthaAndMe this project would never have made it to completion:)
OMG: that photo of the electric drill to the egg is so classic. Thanks for the great tips!
You knew there had to be a power tool involved to keep the husband happy.
This was a really fun post Brette. And very funny. Blowing out eggs would makes me feel ill so I hard boiled my eggs too (I admit the waste is not good though).
Its a shame that they didn’t turn out that great, will you do some other eggs before Easter?
My results are up : http://www.perfectingpru.wordpress.com
Thanks Pru. Yours are just gorgeous. I don’t think we’ll be blowing out eggs again anytime soon! And this looks to be a busy week so I probably won’t make any hardboiled ones to decorate anyhow. I’ve never put eggs in the kids’ baskets, so I don’t have that pressure.
Getting powertools is exactly what my husband would have done!
It would never occur to me to try to use a power tool on an egg for goodness sake. It did work though. His rationale was “there’s no way people can crank these out to sell if they’re doing it by hand!”
Looks like it turned out to be a good family activity! Great job!
I haven’t died eggs since I was little. We never blew out the eggs and I was thinking about trying it. Now, I think baby girl and I will just die hardboiled eggs:) Love the drill!!!
It was pretty difficult. Hardboiled is much easier with little kids I think.
Fun. We are still celebrating Passover and haven’t gotten the Easter things ready yet!
Thanks for sharing your experience here. It brought back great childhood memories and inspired me to color eggs with my nieces and nephew!
How fun! Teen Martha was away on a school trip to Washington DC and when she got home and saw what we did, there was whining that she didn’t get to do it too. So I guess I’ll be doing it again sometime.