Posted by Erin Zimmer, April 24, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Cadbury creme eggs might be gone from drug store sale racks, but don't forget them just yet. As part of Cadbury's Unleash the Goo contest, one runner-up spent six months (yes, half a year) on this complex Rube Goldberg-inspired apparatus, where his egg travels through cups, tight ropes and toilet paper holders before final smooshage. At around 1:30 minutes, there's even a live concert by the always-entertaining, four-piece Smashing Egg Cremes rock band.
Creator Joseph Herscher used 30 hot glue gun sticks and 480 pins to create this homemade whirlwind of a ride. Judging by the ingenious design, he was definitely that kid in high school physics class whose homework you wanted to steal.
Watch the video, after the jump.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, March 25, 2008 at 2:30 PM
Are you still left with too much leftover Easter candy? Let Jesse Oleson help you breathe new life into your Peeps, jelly beans, and chocolate eggs with her suggestions for utilizing Easter candy leftovers. How about a leftover Easter trifle, or s'mores made out of Peeps? You can also turn a boring bowl of cereal into one dotted with Easter candies. Check out all the sugar-laden suggestions at Cakespy.
Previously
Peep Inside a Chocolate Egg: The Must-Have Easter Candy
Make Your Own Cadbury Creme Egg Ice Cream
Photo of the Day: Irish Soda Bread for St. Patrick's Day
Move Over, Rice Krispies: Cereal Treats Smackdown
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 23, 2008 at 10:00 AM
The Washington Post hosted a contest for Peeps dioramas and the results are in. Called Peeps Show, the contest inspired more than 800 entries, some riffing on pop culture, others on current and past events. My favorite was the one at right, which might be fall into the category of "suicide food," since the bunnies are toasting marshmallows 'round the campfire here. Other dioramas in the contest include a reenactment of former D.C. mayor Marion Barry's arrest, a scene from Hugh Hefpeep's mansion, and one titled "The Lion Peeps Tonight."
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 21, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Need a last-minute greeting card for Easter? Cybele made some great Peeps-inspired Easter Island postcards for your convenience. And amusement. If only it were real...
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 21, 2008 at 6:15 PM
Transform your marshmallow Peeps into classy (or classier) treats by coating them in salted caramel and dipping them in melted dark chocolate. Roopa has the recipe for these highbrow peeps at her blog, Raspberry Eggplant.
I'd say the only downside to coating the Peeps in caramel and chocolate is that they ultimately look more like like chocolate lumps than vaguely chick-shaped marshmallows, but the loss of form is worth the 500% increase in deliciousness.
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 21, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Candy Addict shares an idea for a cute Easter Bunny Cake that's easy to cut and construct. Your naked bunny cake is then a blank canvas for heavy doses of frosting topped with all kinds of Easter candy.
Why are eggs closely tied with Easter? Why do we paint them different colors? And what's with all the bunny-related imagery? Get some basic answers from Food Timeline's page about the history and symbolism of Easter foods.
Posted by Erin Zimmer, March 21, 2008 at 8:00 AM
For Raaven O'Quinn, Peeps aren't just pastel-colored marshmallow blobs, they're what poems are made of. About five years ago, O'Quinn fused two wonderful things, Peeps and haikus, to create PeepHaiku.com. The site allows any Peeps poet to upload 5-7-5 metered dedications to those brown, beady eyes.
In the spirit of prime Peeps season, we electronically sat down with O'Quinn to find out why the fat-free, meatless chicks are just so darn special and have spawned other fetishistic side projects such as this dot-org Peeps Research site or Washington Post's Peep Diorama contest. (The 2008 winners will be announced in Sunday's issue).
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 20, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Maki over at Just Hungry must be on a similar wavelength as our own Robyn Lee here at Serious Eats, because neither of them can resist stepping to it with the cute foods. Last year for Easter Maki made "bunny bao." This year, it's "hot cross bunnies." (Nice food pun, btw.) Over on her site she says she started with this recipe from the BBC and tweaked it a bit. From there, she shows you in pictures and words exactly how to create these little guys for yourself.
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 19, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Why had I not heard about the glorious marriage of muffin and goo-filled chocolate treat before reading Nicole Weston's recipe for Cadbury Creme Egg Muffins? Weston say that while you probably wouldn't want to serve these at any regular brunch (but...but maybe I do!), they're good for Easter and may prevent you from eating a bag of Cadbury Mini Creme Eggs all at once, "since you’ll have to eat through each muffin to get to them first." I like that idea; stagger your intake of eggs by wrapping each one in a muffin.
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 17, 2008 at 2:30 PM
If you have patience, dexterity, and the desire to have some classy chocolate egg-shaped treats for Easter, check out these directions for making golden chocolate Easter eggs from the Culinary Institute of America's baking and pastry art professor, Francisco Migoya. All you have to do is empty out some eggshells, fill the empty eggshells with melted chocolate, and paint the eggshells with edible gold paint. It's just a bit more involved than how you decorated eggs in elementary school. [via craftzine.com blog]
Previously:
Peep Inside a Chocolate Egg: The Must-Have Easter Candy
Jacques Torres's Chocolate Egg
Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 6, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Candyblog awards the Easter candy, Marshmallow Peeps inside a Milk Chocolate Egg, a 5 out of 10, or "Pleasant" on a scale of "Inedible" to "Superb." Guess what it's made of? Just guess!
So yes, this is where Peeps come from—within the thick concave walls of "passable" milk chocolate. Some of Candyblog's commenters pointed out that with some graham crackers and a source of heat, this candy could double as filling for s'mores. Granted, the Peep would die in the process, but it all ends up in the same place anyway.
Previously: DIY Peeps, WaPo Peeps Diorama Contest, Pimp Your Peeps, Ten Plagues of Peeps.
Posted by Alaina Browne, April 12, 2007 at 3:30 PM
I ate some fantastic crawfish over Easter weekend. Crawfish boils are a Easter tradition in Louisiana, and that makes sense, since the season typically begins in March and ends in June.
As a New Orleans resident and the author of Eating New Orleans, Pableaux Johnson is an expert on such matters. Here, he aptly describes the tradition:
... [A] backyard crawfish boil—a traditional Easter event throughout Louisiana—is an epic affair involving 40-pound sacks of wriggling crawfish and bubbling cauldrons big enough to be stirred with canoe paddles. Unlike a New England lobster boil, where ingredients fit into a single grocery sack, Louisiana crawfish boils require planning and a pickup truck, used to transport a makeshift outdoor kitchen.
Read the rest of Johnson's "Mudbugs Madness" to learn everything you need and want to know about these tasty critters.
Posted by Robyn Lee, April 6, 2007 at 5:00 PM
This morning I started my day off right with a milk chocolate Easter egg from Jacques Torres. Do I normally eat breakfast? Nope. Do I celebrate Easter? Double nope. Am I using Easter as an excuse to eat oversized chocolate sculptures of unhatched chickens? Oh yeah.
Rattling from within the white chocolate-streaked egg told me there was a surprise inside. Carefully prying the egg open with a knife revealed five baby eggs made of milk, white and dark chocolate. That's one fertile egg. Full of...delicious babies. The chocolate wasn't the stuff of the heavens, but the balance of sweetness and milkiness made the smooth, mild chocolate dangerously easy to eat without feeling the unpleasant effects of a chocolate coma or a sugar-clogged throat. Go get your own egg at Jacques Torres before Easter hits!
Posted by Alaina Browne, April 6, 2007 at 3:30 PM
I love Nosheteria's cute and delicious Cadbury Mini Egg nest cookies for Easter.
I found a recipe for thumbprint cookies here, used ground pecans rather than ground walnut pieces, and simply omitted the jam placing a Mini Egg or two into the center of each cookie. The cookies were dense, rich with butter, and not too sweet, the perfect compliment to the chocolatey candy of the Mini Eggs.
Related: Not Martha's taste comparison of US Mini Eggs (Hershey under license from Cadbury) to Canadian Mini Eggs (Cadbury Chocolate, Toronto).
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 6, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Like a Halloween costume for your Easter egg. Photograph by Rakka.
I couldn't resist the obvious pun—or double-dipping into Lia's earlier post about the Master Shake Easter egg. Blogger Rakka also made the cool Lego-themed eggs above.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 6, 2007 at 11:19 AM
"Shake-zula, the mic rulah, the old schoolah you wanna trip, he'll bring it to ya," says Flickr user Rakka, who created this amazing Master Shake Easter Egg.
Fans of Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force, is this not the best Easter egg of all time? We at Serious Eats love the rest of Rakka's Easter Eggs too though; Alaina likes the Lego eggs and I have a soft spot for the KISS eggs—nothing says "Happy Easter!" quite like Gene Simmons painted on an egg.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 5, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Photograph from iStockphoto.com
Joyce Gemperlein in the Philadelphia Inquirer provides fine advice for buying and cooking ham. She says the most important thing is to do your hamwork. Here's a cheat sheet (or at least the hamlights):
- Get good hamferences: Buy your ham from a butcher you or someone you trust has dealt with
- Buy bone-in ham: The bone marrow suffuses the meat with big-time flavor
- Buy a shank-end ham: It's easier to carve and has sweeter meat
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 5, 2007 at 1:15 PM
Food blogger Maki Ito's Far East–Easter mashup:
Putting Easter and dim sum together, I devised these bunny shaped bao, or steamed buns. (The inspiration for the shape came from a pair of fluffy white bunny slippers I saw at a flea market last summer.) They are quite simple really: tender steamed bun dough is filled and formed into an oval, and the ears are cut with scissors.
Ito filled these steamed buns with a mixture of egg, bacon, and chives.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 4, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Samir Nassar is Eastern Orthodox and his wife Georgette is Catholic, so they and their two sons usually celebrate Easter twice a year. This year both Easters fall on April 8, and so they invited Karola Saekel of the San Francisco Chronicle into their home to see "what a typical Palestinian Christian Easter meal looks and tastes like."
The Nassars were both raised in large families and have relatives in the Bay Area, so they expect about 50 people to come and eat with them on Easter Sunday—all of whom will be getting leftovers. "'Hospitality and generosity are Palestinian hallmarks,' says Sam Nassar. 'If we have to feed three, we cook for 20.'"
Posted by Alaina Browne, April 3, 2007 at 8:44 AM
I'm probably in the minority on this, but I'd rather find one of these cute faux, forever bunnies in my Easter basket than one of its chocolate, instantly devoured cousins. "This faux candy is our forever bunny. Please don’t eat them! our forever bunnies look like chocolate, but we made them out of plaster and paint so they’ll last forever." Get one for yourself or a friend from Small Stump's shop on Etsy.com.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 23, 2007 at 7:56 AM
"For me and many others, the arrival of spring was heralded not by the vernal equinox nor by the springing forward of clocks but by the appearance of Cadbury Creme Eggs in grocery and drug stores. (With global warming messing everything up these days, such material signs might soon be the only evidence of seasonal change remaining.)" Not only did Creme Egg enthusiast Doug Gordon stock up on his favorite Easter candy this year, but he also made himself some Cadbury Creme Egg ice cream, and for that act commited in the pursuit of Serious Eating we salute him.
(This Easter, Brits are getting an official Cadbury Creme Egg ice cream in limited edition for the first time; they already get Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurries every year, as do Canadians.)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 8, 2007 at 6:25 PM
Forget about buying Peeps this Easter and make your own super cute pastel-colored marshmallows! Williams-Sonoma will sell you a kit with everything you need: "marshmallow mix, duck and bunny molds, pastry bags for piping the prepared marshmallow into molds, as well as the purple, pink and yellow sanding sugars and black eyes you’ll need for decorating your creations. You can also cut the marshmallow into shapes using the included butterfly, bunny and chick cookie cutters." $24.50 for the kit, which is available online/catalog only, not in stores.
[via Popgadget]
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 22, 2007 at 3:42 PM
Candyblog reminds us that Easter candies are now on store shelves by reviewing one of Cadbury's latest offerings, the Royal Dark Mini Eggs: "The little chalky looking eggs are a smidge darker on the outside, more vibrant than the Cadbury Mini Eggs and don’t have any speckles. Even though they’re dark chocolate (well, there’s a little milkfat in there) they smell particularly milky to me, or at least freakishly sweet but with a smoky chocolate undertone."
