How to Blow Easter Eggs

Everyone I know hard boils their Easter eggs, but I like to blow them. To be perfectly plain we usually split our bounty in half and hard boil some and blow some because who doesn't like a good hardboiled egg, right? When I was a girl my mom taught us all how to blow an egg and it was part of our roster of special family traditions. Growing up I didn't know anyone who decorated hollow eggs and now, as an adult I have still, fantastically enough, never have knowingly met a single person who knew how to blow eggs much less anyone who really does it. Kind of fun to have a corner on something small.

I love the delicacy of the finished product:  such a feather light form of natural sculpture. I also love that you can keep the eggs out at room temperature. You can use them to decorate, keep them around for keepsakes or even give them as gifts because they are really art, not food; nature brought inside for appreciation....every bit as beautiful as driftwood sculpture or framed pressed flowers.

A finished, hollow egg.

I also love the niggly work of spearing the tiny blowing holes with our pearl-headed sewing pin (the pearl is key!). I think of how it must feel to be the tiny baby chick inside one of these shells, digging at it for your very life. Kind of a daunting task. It must be a major boost to see that first pin-prick of light shafting through the walls.

Here is how to blow your own hollow Easter eggs:

1. Stab a single tiny hole in one end of a raw egg.
2. Stab repeatedly at the other end in a circle about the size of the head of your pearl-headed pin.
3. Put the tiny hole to your lips and sealing tightly to the egg like a trumpet player, blow! (Be careful to hold your egg firmly but gently it is easy to get carried away with the exertion of blowing and crush the shell in your hands.)
4. The white will stream out first which is the hardest part to expell (Perservere! And occasionally shake the egg!) and then the yolk will come in golden rivulets, it's the easy part at the end.
5. Then rinse the eggs to remove all traces of yolk and white and leave to dry....then decorate away!

 

Ru was big enough to do one himself this year for the first time.

The "scrambled egg" leftovers we'll cook and eat on Easter morning.

Slightly over half a dozen, transluscent, hollow eggs. :)