Dishes By Michelle: Hey party PEEPS! Interested in some S'MEEPS?

Easter isn't even here yet... but I'm getting antsy already! The candy is starting to make an appearance!!!!

I’m going to sound a lot like my mother right now…something I swore I’d never do! But MAN OH MAN… KIDS NOWADAYS THEY’VE GOT IT MADE! Why do they have it made you ask? Oh, I’ll tell you! No, it’s not that they have a cell phone at age 9… or the designer purses they’re carrying by 12…heck, it’s not even the new ipod they’re walking around with! It’s the fact that nowadays… kids have my favorite Easter candy of ALL TIME available to them year round!!!

There were certain things I looked forward to every year as a child growing up…. Santa bringing all my Christmas presents… my birthday that followed two days after and of course Easter and those little sugary filled marshmallows in florescent yellow and pink called PEEPS!

Oh my beloved PEEPS. I mean it used to be that around 3 weeks before Easter we’d start seeing those displays of yellow packages wrapped in cellophane from floor to ceiling in the supermarkets… and I’d start bugging my mom saying “Please Mom! Can we buy PEEPS!” and she’d say, “wait till Easter honey, they’ll be in your Easter basket!” and I literally could not wait for the day that I’d bite into those little chickadee heads and tear them off and taste those candy-coated bites with their crunchy exterior and creamy soft centers!

Did you know????

It takes 6 minutes to make one PEEPS chick.
Original PEEPS have a shelf life of 2 years!
PEEPS are the most popular non-chocolate Easter candy in the US.
Over 70 million PEEPS chicks lined up beak-to-tail are needed to reach from New York City to Los Angeles
PEEPS were born in 1940.
PEEPS chicks for Easter come in 6 festive colors! Yellow, Pink, Lavender, Blue, Orange & Green! (My favorite is Yellow!)

Think you can’t have a recipe with PEEPS??? Think again! This one comes courtesy of Serious Eats Blog.

S’MEEPS! A twist on the orignal recipe S’mores but with PEEPS! They’re my new Easter time favorite! Let’s show these kids a thing or two about what kind of old school PEEPS we really are!

S’MEEPS

1 Package PEEPS

4 Graham Crackers, separated into 8 halves

Four 1-ounce squares semi sweet chocolate

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place a 1-oz square of chocolate on 4 of the graham cracker halves and top with a PEEP. Place on an aluminum foil covered sheet pan and pop them in the oven for 2-3 minutes. Watch them carefully as those little PEEPS will go burning up in flames in the blink of an eye! Once the PEEPS have been melted or toasted to your liking, take them out of the oven and squish the other half of the graham cracker on top! You will be in chickadee heaven!

So there you have it folks! My ode to PEEPS. They truly hold a special place in my heart and I can only hope they somehow make it into yours too! You really don’t know what you’re missing out on ‘till you’ve tried a PEEPS!

Allow me to leave you with a few more of my Easter favorites.... what's yours?