Baked Eggs

Easter is my favorite holiday.

It has nothing to do with the sweet pastels and welcoming of spring, I'm in it for the chocolate bunnies and the jelly beans. Oh, and I absolutely love eggs!

Somehow I almost completely forgot about Easter this year. I'd been doodling ideas of bringing you eggs dyed with kitchen staples, but alas, here we are on the eve of Easter weekend and I am without dyed eggs.

Maybe you are too? That's awesome! Because it gives us a chance to celebrate the egg for being perfectly beautiful without some silly dye. There's less mess! And we don't have to buy one of those egg dyeing kits or spend hours cooking down beets for naturally dyed eggs.

Here are a few ideas from things you might have on hand already:
- Colored pencils or crayons
- Stripes, polka dots, and chevron can all be made from tape, stickers, label sheets, anything adhesive
- Paper can be decoupaged with flour and water or used to make a little egg stand
- Twine or ribbon make a simple, pretty wrap-around

For years, I've been hard cooking eggs using a boiling method that involves covering the eggs with cold water, bring them to a boil, cutting the heat off, and leaving the eggs for 12 minutes. This method really does yield lovely eggs with a soft creamy yolk, but its no good if I need more than 6 eggs - I don't have a pot large enough!

Just this year I discovered that eggs can be hard-cooked in the oven (ironically from this book via Pinterest). I think you can debate whether baking is really better - you may end up with a few brown spots on the eggs and the yolks aren't super creamy - but it is faster when you need a large number of eggs. My method is actually a little faster than the original.

Baked Hard Cooked Eggs

Arrange your eggs in a mini muffin tin with the larger round end in the cup. Set your oven to 325˚F and place the mini muffin tin on the center rack. Set a timer for 25 minutes. While the eggs bake prepare an ice bath. Start checking the eggs for doneness at 25 minutes by removing one egg (tongs are best for this), plunging it into the ice bath and then cracking into it. Your total time will vary depending on your oven. I found 28 minute to be prefect and my oven only reached 325˚F after 20 minutes. 

Still wanting to dye?
The Kitchn's post on natural dyes -  pretty and useful! 

These Neon Dipped Dyed Eggs over on Oh Joy!  are easy, trendy, and cool.

And these Pantone eggs are just delightful!

Hope y'all are enjoying your Good Friday.