It's Peep Time

When I was thinking about writing this post, my initial thought was to announce that today (the Thursday before Easter) is the day to open your package of Peeps so they will be stale by Easter.  Long after my older siblings stopped eating Easter candy, they still had to have their stale Peeps.  I personally am not a huge fan of Peeps, but some folks are just fanatics about it.

As I started the "research" for this post, I found a wealth of information about all the different ways to eat Peeps.  First I should address the "stale" or "crunchy" method as it is the easiest.  Open the package in advance and let them breathe.  That's it.  Simple.  In fact, here's a tutorial from "From Here to Eternity."

Preferences on Peeps are not limited to stale vs. fresh.  You can toast your Peep (it ain't pretty), but be careful - the colored part is flammable.  It does look yummy, though - you can make the Peep into a s'more!  You can even watch a video about it:

Peeps make great decorations for other desserts.  I've tried that myself and can say that bunny Peeps can hide a lot of imperfections on the side of a cake.  If you want to make this cake, get my recipe here:

You can wrap them in a blanket brownie as demonstrated by "Life Love & Sugar"

All these desserts have me in an Easter planning mood.  You too?  Well get going peeps!

Happy Easter!

Cindy

Peeps Easter Cake

If you look on Pinterest, you will see lots of Easter crafts, and finally, yes FINALLY, I am starting to get that crafting mojo back.  Not original crafts, mind you, but crafts!  I'm in the Easter mood so I'm going to be featuring some old and new projects I have done for Easter.  This one is from last year and I was SOOO proud of it.

It may not look so great to the serious cake decorator (just check some of the stuff on Pinterest), but it made my Easter guests smile.  Here's how easy it was:

I made 2 chocolate cake mixes and used 9" round pans.  (You can use whatever flavor of cake you want.)  Instead of filling up the pans with the batter, I only filled them about half way so the layers would be thinner.  You can also slice an already baked round (make sure to freeze it first), but I liked this way better.  Just make sure to watch the baking time - it won't take as long so don't burn your cake.  After your cake layers cool a bit, freeze them (or at least make them very cold).  I can't believe it took me so long in life to realize that a frozen cake is much easier to frost.  Duh!

Next, I used some white or cream cheese frosting and split 2-3 tubs into four glass bowls.  I like to have too much frosting instead of too little, so I used three tubs.  One I separated the icing into the bowls, I started experimenting with color.  I used food coloring.  If you are not used to dabbling in food coloring, I would suggest you read the package to get an idea of the ratios of the respective colors.  However, be very careful in following the box instructions for how much dye to use for icing - they really tend to overdo the number of drops needed!  Keep the same ratio of color to color, just don't use as much.  It's no fun to have your guests sitting there with dyed lips and tongues - yuck!

I managed to get pink, yellow, purple and blue with my dyes.  From there it was pretty easy.  I iced each layer with a different color, including between the layers.  Once my little rainbow was finished, I lined the outside with Peeps.  If you have trouble getting them to stay, use a little more frosting on the Peep.  I finished it off with robin's eggs, M&Ms and any other candy in pastel colors.  I ran out of time, but I wanted to dye a little coconut green (use only a drop of food coloring and mix with coconut in a Ziploc bag) to make some grass for my eggs.

If you don't like all the color on the outside of the cake, you can do the same thing inside the cake by coloring the batter - you just need to use white cake.  

So colorful, so springtime and so much fun!

Happy Easter!

cindy