Local restaurateurs come up with their own reci-Peeps for colorful Easter treats
Let’s face the Easter facts.
Peeps – the traditional sugar-coated marshmallows that hatch in Easter baskets each year – are fluffy and fun, but they aren’t that appetizing on their own once you pass age 10.
But somehow, it’s not Easter unless at least a dozen make it into your grocery cart.
I recently asked some local restaurateurs to come up with original recipes that incorporated Peeps and could be fun to serve on this Easter Sunday. I even came up with my own Peeps recipe.
It turns a standard Easter Sunday salad into a neon-colored treat. When trying to think up my own recipe, I thought about things I would put marshmallows in anyway. It’s too late for hot chocolate, and Rice Krispies treats seemed too easy. My mind went to one of my favorite potluck dishes: Waldorf salad, which mixes crisp celery and apples, sweet grapes, crunchy nuts and marshmallows together and binds them with a bit of mayo. Why not substitute chopped-up, neon-colored Peeps for the marshmallows? The results were whimsical and delicious.
A couple of local food professionals also let me rope them into the fun.
Christian Shomberg and his fiancee, Jamee Lowe, own Churn & Burn, the fun ice cream store and coffee shop at 556 S. Oliver that makes treats using liquid nitrogen. They experimented with several Peeps recipes before coming up with their “Shock Thera-Peep” ice cream treat. They froze a yellow Peep bunny using liquid nitrogen, which made him crunchy and brittle. They chopped him up and stirred him into their ice cream base, doctored up with lemonade powder and yellow food coloring. The flash-frozen result was sweet and lemony and had a pleasing, chewy texture. Though the average home cook doesn’t have liquid nitrogen sitting around, the couple suggested a way people can make the treat using their freezers and some store-bought ingredients.
“It was kind of a challenge,” Shomberg said of inventing his recipe. “What we came up with tastes kind of like a sorbet or a sherbet.”
The duo has added the Shock the Peep creation to its menu for spring.
The owner of Brown Box Bakery, a popular cupcake food truck, tried to think of ways to bake Peeps into her creations, but the results were gloppy and inconsistent.
Owner Anna Hastings and her 8-year-old daughter, Kara, came up with two inventive ideas for decorating chocolate cupcakes with Peeps. On one, a pink bunny appears to be popping out of the ground. On the other, a yellow chick is hatching from a chocolate egg, delicately made using a balloon.
Both toppings are easy to create using your own chocolate cupcake recipe, Hastings said. And you’ll have to use your own because she isn’t sharing hers.
“It was fun,” she said of the Peeps challenge. “Sometimes I wonder if Peeps are one of those traditional things that you have to have for it to be Easter.”
Shock Thera-Peep
Makes one serving
Two yellow bunny Peeps
1 1/2 tablespoons of powdered lemonade mix
Salt
Yellow food coloring
1 cup vanilla gelato or ice cream
Freeze one of the two Peep bunnies until solid. Then, break it up with a spoon into tiny, pebble-like pieces. Stir the broken-up Peep, the lemonade mix, a pinch of salt and about four drops of yellow food coloring into the ice cream until mixed. Top creation with an intact yellow Peep for garnish, and serve.
Churn & Burn
Waldorf Salad a la Peeps
24 Peeps in a variety of colors, refrigerated in advance
2 honeycrisp or other pink apples, chopped
1 Granny Smith or other green apple, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 cups green or red grapes, halved
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
Select 15 of the Peeps in different colors. Coarsely chop them into the size of mini-marshmallows, careful not to leave any recognizable body parts intact to freak out the children. Set aside. In a medium bowl, combine chopped apples, celery, walnuts and grapes. Add mayonnaise and gently toss until combined. Add chopped Peeps and toss gently so as to not disturb coloring. Chill for at least two hours. Garnish with remaining intact Peeps and serve.
Denise Neil
Peep cakes in a cup
Makes 2 dozen
Favorite chocolate cupcake recipe
24 foil baking cups
For bunny cupcakes:
Use No. 233 frosting tip.
1 tube pre-made green frosting
12 bunny-shaped Peeps
Six Oreo cookies, whites removed, crushed
1 teaspoon chocolate frosting
For chick cupcakes:
12 chick-shaped Peeps
1 container chocolate frosting
1/2 bag of chocolate chips, melted
12 balloons
To make bunny cupcakes: Bake cupcakes and allow them to cool. Hollow out a tiny hole in the center of the cupcake that the bunny can nestle in. Using the frosting tip and green frosting, pipe “grass” all along the outside rim of the cupcake. Surround bunny body with Oreo crumbles for dirt. Dot some chocolate eyeballs and a nose on him.
To make hatching peep cupcakes: Hollow out a tiny hole in the center of the cupcake and place the Peep inside. Pipe chocolate frosting in a circle around him. To make the chocolate egg shells, melt chocolate in a bowl. Rinse off balloons, let them dry, then blow up into tomato-sized ball. Cover half the balloon with the melted chocolate and let it set. Then, pop the balloon and remove it from the dry shell. Press the shell, half open, onto the frosting behind the Peep to make him look like he’s hatching.
Brownbox Bakery
This story was originally published March 31, 2015 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Local restaurateurs come up with their own reci-Peeps for colorful Easter treats."