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My friend and I are trying to make 'ninja black eggs' which are essentially hollowed eggs filled with powdered material.

We have two questions:

  1. Is there a way to thicken the egg shell? My current idea is basking the eggs in some-sort of calcium. Would this work, or is there a better way?

  2. How can we make the eggs black? We've tried making egg dye; and we have used 1 tsp of red, and 1/2 tsp of blue, but somehow the eggs turned brown.

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because red and blue yield brown (last sentence of this section) – flying sheep Aug 18 '11 at 12:33
I thought they make purple... Maybe I suck at art.. – James Litewski Aug 18 '11 at 13:24
3  
Ninja black eggs? For IRL Angry Birds, perhaps? – Abby T. Miller♦ Aug 18 '11 at 14:19
@James: Nitpicker, i thought of red and cyan, as they should ideally mix to black, but will mostly result in some brownish color. – flying sheep Aug 18 '11 at 16:38
For thicker egg shells -- use smaller eggs. (for chicken eggs, at least ... if you change species, this might not hold true) – Joe Aug 19 '11 at 12:50
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closed as off topic by yossarian♦ Aug 21 '11 at 20:08

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2 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

Why do you need to thicken the shells? Some bird's eggs have thicker walls than others, and it also seems that younger hens form thicker shells than older ones. However, it is doubtful that a thicker eggshell is available commercially. Your best bet may be to poke holes in the eggs, let them drain and dry, and then paint them with a strengthening varnish. A water-based polyurethane maybe? You should probably color them first, and then varnish them.

You can buy black food coloring. Buy it online if you haven't seen it at your local stores. You will probably have to use more than suggested to get full, deep color coverage. If that doesn't work, you could try clothes dye, Rit is a good brand, but I don't see evidence it is recommended for use on eggs. However, since it appears you won't be eating the eggs, just throwing them at each other, it is probably safe, and you could dye a bunch of eggs at once.

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You can't use different colors to make black. If you combine the primary colors, red, by blue, and yellow you will get brown, but black is the absence of color. Try black egg dye.

The problem I think is that the albumen of the egg is a translucent material and adding food coloring is also a translucent material. So effectively you are going to get a strong yellow color from the opaque yolk, and that is what will be predominant, so it makes sense you are getting brown. Adding translucent colors to opaque yellow will get a brown. Think about adding milk to coffee. If you add whole milk, you get a lighter brown. If you add skim milk, which has more water, you get something akin to gray.

So what you want is some sort of additive that is opaque. Maybe squid ink.

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