Peeeeeps!

So cute, and not stale!

I'm going on a sugar diet, which will consists of nothing but Easter candy until it's gone. I have to get it out of my apartment and office so I can go back to eating like a normal human being. I packed my lunch yesterday with my Easter basket of jelly beans, pixie stix, See's peanut brittle and mint patties, marshmallows, and some homegrown tangerines that taste like candy.

I don't think I helped the sugar shocked weekend when I decided to make Peeps. They are so cute but have such a bad reputation for being stale, so I figured homemade marshmallow peeps would be well received, and they were! I made two flavors, the classic vanilla Peep, covered in yellow sugar, and a gourmet Peep flavored with blackberry jam, covered in purple sugar. For the yellow Peep, I used my favorite marshmallow recipe from Alton Brown. For the purple Peep, I adapted Martha's strawberry marshmallow recipe and used blackberry jam instead of strawberry jam.

Peeps are simple. They are just marshmallows covered in sugar. Marshmallows themselves are just sugar melted and then whipped. Easy enough, except the piping! There were no action shots of this, as my hands were covered in go.

I use so much corn syrup for my candy making that I was delighted to see they now make a 32 oz jar of the stuff. The woman at Von's was about the card me though. She had never seen corn syrup sold like that and thought it was a bottle of Popov Vodka! With all the fuss about child obesity, I'm surprised they don't actually card for sugar.

Homemade colored sugar. I finally was able to use this superfine sugar I've been sitting on for a while. Just mixed it in a bag with food dye until all the food color was incorporated and a homogeneous sugar was created. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I've got all my ducks in a row.