For a friend's upcoming Yule Ball celebration, everyone was invited to bring a Harry Potter or Hogwarts-themed treat. Getting a bit overenthusiastic, I decided to make deviled eggs, dyed to match the four House color themes - red and gold for Gryffindor, blue and bronze for Ravenclaw, yellow and black for Hufflepuff, and green and white for Slytherin - and individually flavored to boot.
If you're interested, here's how I did it:
I started with, obviously, eggs. Aged eggs are better - the ones I used for this had been in the fridge for 1 to 3 weeks (I used several cartons overall). Eggs that have sat for longer will separate from their shells more easily, leaving you with a perfectly smooth hard-boiled egg white when you're finished.
To begin, hard-boil the eggs normally. Put them in the pot, cover them with about 1-2 inches of water to spare, and set them slowly to boil. Once boiling, let cook for 1 minute, then take off the heat, cover, and let sit for 12-15 minutes, and they'll be cooked through.
Slice them in half, and separate the yolks into their own bowls. This is a good time to start splitting them between 4 different bowls, if you'd like to do them in 4 different colors and/or flavors.
Once you have the whites and yolks separated, rinse the whites to get any traces of egg yolk or shell shards off. Then you'll be ready to dye them.
To create the dye, put enough water to cover the eggs into a small bowl or dish. Add 2-3 teaspoons of vinegar to help the dye set, and then add color. I used regular liquid-drop food coloring for these; don't be shy about adding plenty of it, up to 1/3 of the dripper bottle. The eggs will still take a while to set up, especially for the more intense red and blue, but the more color you add, the darker the eggs will get. I let the red eggs soak for about half and hour, and the blue ones for almost 45 minutes. The yellow ones went faster - more like 15 minutes. You can try to use natural coloring - beet juice makes a deep red-pink, and squid ink would make a nice black - but you'd have to get creative for the Ravenclaw blue and Slytherin green.
Let the eggs whites dry on some paper towels while you go on to the yolk mixtures. A shorter version would be to just dye the egg whites - yellow, red, blue, and green - and mix all the yolks into a single type of filling of your choice. For the more detailed version, here's my four different deviled egg fillings.
For Ravenclaw, I decided on a sunny roasted-red-pepper-and-orange-zest filling. For 6 egg yolks, add 2 Tbsp roasted red pepper pesto; 2 Tbsp mayonnaise; 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard; 1 Tbsp orange juice; 1/2 tsp orange zest; 1 tsp cayenne pepper; and 2 tsp smoked paprika. The red pepper made the filling orange to begin with, so I only had to add 1 drop each of blue, green, and red food coloring to get the filling the correct shade of orange-bronze. I used sliced almonds for garnish.
I'd never really used a pastry bag before, but decided to go for it, and found it surprisingly easy - most deviled egg fillings are the perfect consistency for it, and it adds a nice touch to the finished product.
For Gryffindor, I chose a mild cheese-and-garlic filling (I'd originally meant to do so for Ravenclaw, but the red pepper filling comes out too dark for Gryffindor's gold). For 6 egg yolks, it takes 1/2 a package of Boursin garlic-and-herb cheese; 1 1/2 Tbsp of mayonnaise; and 1/2 tsp fresh minced garlic. To get a brilliant yellow, I added 10 drops of yellow food coloring. A mix of fresh herbs (I used basil, mint, and parsley) can be added on top for a little more color.
Slytherin got a spicy wasabi filling, which goes with the green theme. For 6 egg yolks, add 3 Tbsp mayonnaise; 1 Tbsp wasabi paste (or equal amounts of wasabi powder and water) or to taste; 1 Tbsp
very finely minced green onion; and 1 Tbsp
very finely minced cucumber. If the onion and cucumber aren't chopped as small as you can get them, they can clog your pastry bag; unless you're just filling your eggs with a spoon, in which case it doesn't matter so much. 1 drop of blue food coloring and 12 drops of green will finish it off. Some wasabi peas or edamame make for a good topping.
For Hufflepuff, I went with a sweet honey-mustard filling. With 6 egg yolks, use 3 Tbsp mayonnaise; 1/2 Tbsp Dijon mustard; 1/2 Tbsp yellow mustard (I only had stone-ground, so used that instead); and 1 Tbsp honey. To make the yolks an inky black, I used black paste food coloring, which is
very potent. 1/2 tsp is sufficient to get it very dark, at which point it will also stain your hands, and lots of other things, so be careful. Top with crushed pretzels, if desired.
Through no fault of Hufflepuff's, the honey-mustard filling came out too runny and I didn't notice until after I added the black food coloring, so it was messy business trying to mold it properly. The solution I tried was to add a few tablespoons of tapioca starch (any starch would also work ), put it in a small pan, and heat it a few minutes over medium-low heat; it almost immediately began to thicken and cling together, which made molding it a snap. The too-runny black coloring had already stained the yellow eggs a bit, though, as you can see below.
And that's how I did it! My one last word of advice, if you want to keep a crisp presentation: the eggs will stain each other if different colors touch, so be careful about putting them right next to each other until they're ready to eat. For the curious, I modified all of these recipes from ones found in the book "D'lish Deviled Eggs", by Kathy Casey.
