Kimberly Vetrano

It’s Easter Time! You know what that means – PEEPS®

It’s Easter time. It’s evident when you walk into most stores because it’s impossible to avoid the aisles of candy, baskets, toys and plush animals. Most stores where I live have had Easter products on the shelves around the beginning of February (Easter is not until April 5th this year).

Growing up Easter was always one of my favorite holidays, right behind Christmas and Halloween.

One year the Easter Bunny brought me basket made out of solid chocolate. In addition it was filled with chocolate and other types of candies. It was truly chocolate heaven – or chocolate overload depending on how you looked at it.

The Easter Bunny would leave our baskets by our front door. I spent most of the time downstairs in the playroom so I wanted to take my beautiful chocolate basket downstairs. On my way down I tripped and the basket went flying. When it hit the ground it shattered into a lot of chocolate pieces. Since we had dogs and cats, and people walked all over the carpet, there was no way the “5 second rule” would apply here so we had to throw it all away. The only thing that was left were some wrapped chocolate candies and a package of marshmallow PEEPS®.

Back then there were only the yellow PEEPS® chicks available. I think the bunnies were too but the Easter Bunny only brought me the chicks.

PEEPS® have always been a part of every Easter. Even when I became a mom I made sure that there were at least one package of PEEPS® in every Easter basket I made for them.

PEEPS® have come a long way since I was a kid. Now PEEPS® are available in a wide variety of colors, shape and flavors. They are also available year round. Other holidays are also enjoying PEEPS® including Valentine’s Day, Christmas and Halloween. There are even Fourth of July PEEPS®.

Did you know…?

  • Yellow is America’s best-selling color of PEEPS® Chicks and Bunnies, followed by pink and then blue.
  • Just Born produces enough PEEPS® Brand Marshmallow Candies in one year to circle the earth three times.
  • Chicks rule! 4 out of every 5 PEEPS® purchased are Chicks – either flavored, dipped in chocolate, covered in chocolate or in the original un-flavored marshmallow form.

There are so many PEEPS® fans in the world that the creators, Just Born, have PEEPS® plush, apparel, and other goodies available on their website, PeepsandCompany.com. There you can find PEEPS® dog rope toys, PEEPS® cat nip toys, giant stuffed PEEPS®, PEEPS® jewelry and even a PEEPS® shaped Yankee Candle (plus much, much more!).

PEEPS® are always introducing new flavors and products. This Easter is no exception. Check out what’s new with PEEPS® this holiday.

Some of the new products are sold exclusively at specific stores. Mystery PEEPS® are only available at Walmart. The Orange Cream PEEPS® are only sold at CVS and the flavored PEEPS® (Lime, Lemon and Orange Delight) are sold only at Target. All other PEEPS® are sold at many other retail locations.

There are also Blue Raspberry PEEPS® which are very sour. My kids love them.

I LOVE the Chocolate Mousse dipped in Dark Chocolate PEEPS®. They are SO GOOD! They come in a 3 pack so there is enough to share – or enjoy them all for yourself.

The Peepsters are also a huge hit with not only my family but also my neighbors. They are individually wrapped chocolate covered marshmallows.

PEEPS® are great “as is,” but did you know that you can do so much more with them? There is a site dedicated to great recipes and things you can make with PEEPS®. It’s easy enough to remember – MarshmallowPeeps.com. What I love about the ideas you find on that site is that a lot of them are submitted by people like you and I.

You should really check out the site for a lot of fun and easy (not to mention yummy) ideas for having fun with your marshmallow PEEPS®.

I found two ideas on Pinterest (another great source for ideas) that I wanted to try with my family. One was making “nests” out of crunchy Chinese noodles, marshmallows, candy that looks like “eggs” and of course PEEPS®. The other was making bird houses with graham crackers, coconut, candy that looks like “eggs”, green food coloring and PEEPS®.

I’m not THAT bad when it comes to creating things. I did make these yummy cupcakes a few years ago with roasted coconut.

Sadly my PEEPS® creations didn’t turn out that well.

For the “nest” recipe I used the following.

  • 3 cups miniature marshmallows
  • 4 cups chow mein noodles
  • Assorted “egg” looking candies
  • PEEPS® Chicks

I sprayed the inside of a large glass bowl with non-stick spray and put 1/2 of the marshmallows in it then popped it in the microwave. I microwaved them for several seconds until I saw them start to swell up. I then carefully removed them from the microwave and with a wooden spoon (also sprayed with non-stick spray) I poured in 1/2 of the chow mein noodles and stirred them together. That didn’t work out so well for me. Everything started to stick. So I sprayed a little non-stick spray on my hands and tried to mold the noodles and marshmallow mixture into next shapes but everything kept sticking to my hands. My kids found it very amusing. I had marshmallow everywhere. LOL!

I tried. I even added some green colored sugar to add a bit of color to the nest but it didn’t work out so well.

I’ve seen this recipe on the Internet and Pinterest so there must be an easier and better way to make them. I’ll try a different recipe next time.

For the bird houses, that was equally as messy. But we had fun none the less.

For this recipe we needed…

  • 1 cup of mini marshmallows
  • 1 cup of shredded coconut tinted green with green food coloring
  • candies that looked like “eggs”
  • PEEPS® chicks
  • Graham crackers (at least 3 whole crackers per house)

We pre-tinted the shredded coconut ahead of time by pouring the coconut in a bowl and adding a couple of drops of green food coloring and mixing it well. We set it aside for when we were done making our houses.

I melted the mini-marshmallows in the microwave for a few seconds in a microwave safe bowl until they started to swell. I then carefully removed it from the microwave.

Using a butter knife we used the melted marshmallow as “glue” to attach the pieces of crackers together to make a bird house. We used one square for the two sides and back, and then one square each (at an angle) for the roof.

It sounded easy enough but the marshmallow would firm up too quickly and I had to keep microwaving it. The marshmallow also got a bit messy and some of the graham crackers would stick together OK and others didn’t.

The results might not have turned out all that wonderful but my kids and I had a grand time trying to make this work. We had A LOT of laughs with this one, including dropping a butter knife covered with melted marshmallow on the floor and having it stick to the floor (we had a hard time pulling it off – LOL).

OK. So they are not Pinterest worthy and Martha Stewart would probably cringe at the sight of them, but that is OK with me. My family and I had a great time trying to make them (and eating our “mistakes”). After all, the holidays are about making memories that last a lifetime, not about making something “perfect.”

I’m sure you can find different recipes for the bird houses too, ones that are less messy.

Do you make anything fun with PEEPS®? Do you have a favorite shape or flavor PEEPS®? What do you think about the new flavors?

Don’t forget to check out both websites (linked above) as well as PEEPS® on social media – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Their official hashtag is #PEEPSONALITY.

Kimberly

*I received free product samples in order to do this review/recipes. There was no compensation. The opinions expressed are my own and not influenced in any way.

The post It’s Easter Time! You know what that means – PEEPS® appeared first on She Scribes.

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