There used to be a lady in my neighborhood who made hundreds of cascarones every year for the neighborhood egg hunt. I have no idea how she pulled it off– but it was always magical. She retired and moved away and while I’m not ready to take up the charge for the whole neighborhood I knew I wanted to make some for Spring Equinox and take them to the next level.
Eggs are a classic symbol is spring— they start out hard and lifeless as a rock, then almost without warning they burst open with life. There is a clear parallel to winter, dead and gray and then suddenly there is green popping up everywhere and life explodes. These eggs are dyed with cabbage (blue) and turmeric and cabbage (green) with ferns and yarrow providing the leaf patterns.
Cascarones are traditionally filled with confetti and you sneak up on an unsuspecting party and crush the egg exploding confetti all over their head. My kids LOVE it. I used seed paper confetti so that where the confetti falls there will be flowers later in spring. I love the idea of the flowers serving as a reminder of the celebration.
Last, I have begun the process of grinding up last years eggshells to sprinkle on the garden as a calcium supplement which brought to mind cascarilla. Cascarilla is folk magic for protection. It’s made of ground up eggshells. Interestingly you can also sprinkle crushed up eggshells around plants to protect them from slugs. The cascarilla here serves as physical and metaphorical protection— it is literally protecting and providing nutrients for the seeds and it is figuratively providing protection for your yard and your little egg crushers.
Botanical Cascarilla Cascarones
When choosing seeds for this project, make sure you pick something that won’t be invasive in your part of the world. Unlike some of the seed projects we did in the winter, you no longer want plants that require cold to germinate because it’s too late in the season. Non-invasive annual flowers are a good choice for this project. You can make or purchase seed paper, if you make it you’ll want it to be quite thin so that you are able to use a hole punch. If it’s too thick just cut it with scissors instead.
Materials:
- eggs (dyed or undyed– here is more on natural dyes for eggs)
- seed paper (you can make or purchase this)
- crushed eggshells
- tissue paper
- glue
- hole punch
Method:
Start with eggs that haven’t been cooked, you can dye them before or after you crack them or just use them plain. Try to crack off just the top bit of the shell as shown. There are special tools to help you do this but I just crack them carefully on the edge of a bowl.
Shake the contents into a bowl and reserve for cooking. Rinse out the shells with warm water. The hole is too small to try and peel out the membrane so I just leave it. If you want you can dye your shells at the stage.
Crush your eggshells until even and about the size of confetti (I use a mortar and pestle, but you could also use a plastic bag and a rolling pin). Use the hole punch to make as many little circles of seed paper as you can stand. Luckily my kids love this job- it is quite tedious. Mix the eggshell and the seed confetti together in a bowl. If your paper is white (mine was) you can first paint it with watercolor.
Fill the eggs 1/2 to 3/4 of the way full with the eggshell/ confetti mixture. You can set them in a egg carton to make this easier.
Dab some glue around the edges of the hole on the top of the egg and place a piece of tissue paper over the opening. Smooth it into place and allow to dry.
Once your cascarones have dried you can shake them and crack them open over unsuspecting siblings… (Don’t hit the eggshell on anyone’s head just crush it in your hand in the vicinity.)
[…] feel like a good idea if there was a hard boiled egg inside. (My test egg was a hollow shell for cascarones.) So made a new batch with cheap vodka. It worked great. (I also tested it on a hard boiled egg and […]