Holiday

by BS

Peeps Gone Wild

OK, we’re addicted. We’ve realized that those puffy Easter candies everyone throws out around May 1st are good for more than just target practice. Turns out you can put them in everything from brownies to pizza. In hopes of never letting another peep go stale, here are our favorite peeps recipes from ES and around the web.

Salted Caramel and Dark Chocolate Covered Peeps

Raspberry Eggplant blog gives the purple guys a gourmet makeover.

Recipe: salted caramel and dark chocolate covered peeps

Peeps Monkey Bread

Pull-apart buttermilk biscuits stuffed with peeps, via the Knead for Speed

Recipe: Peeps monkey Bread

Peeps’mores

Chocolate bunnies and flourescent bunnies combine to make one perfect Easter snack, courtesy of Foy Update.

Recipe: peeps s’mores

by bakersroyale

Nutella Pastry Pockets

Somewhere between the coffee and the Bloody Mary this Easter brunch, these powdered pastry heroics will showcase the baker in you. Nothing fancy, nothing exotic, just Nutella and some sliced bananas between the light airy layers of a puff pastry.

Incredibly easy to make, they will have you in and out of the kitchen in about 20 minutes or less. That is, if you use store-bought puff pastry. If you want to get elbow deep and pull a Ms. Martha Stewart, than have it and make the puff pastry from scratch—just add about 1 ½ hours to that 15-20 minute session and nix the easy in it.

Either way you bake it up, these are delicious, and psst…these can be made the night before and leave you more time to get your game on for the annual Easter egg hunt.

Nutella Pastry Pockets

in Breakfast / Desserts / Featured / Holiday / Recipe 7 comments

by Emily

Magic Marshmallow Peep Treats

Generally, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I do have a foodie fetish for anything marshmallow. Combine that with my love of cute and colorful things, and it should come as no surprise that my favorite cereal as a kid was Lucky Charms, and my favorite Easter candy was obviously Peeps.

Now that I am all grown up, no magical Easter fun for me anymore, right? WRONG!

As adults, I think we can all agree that there is absolutely no activity more mentally stimulating than brainstorming ways to implement Peeps into everyday recipes. This time of year my complex mind is constantly churning out ideas. The perfect storm has been brewing, and it didn’t take long for me to pair my beloved childhood cereal and beloved childhood candy into one miraculous dessert/snack/breakfast (why not? sugar provides a lot of energy for an otherwise dreary morning).

Warning: these are not for the faint of heart; they are pushing the threshold of the human body’s tolerance for both sugar and cuteness consumption. Personally, I think they are perfect for children, or those who are still children at heart, or maybe a certain subset of the population who still think that Lisa Frank‘s designs are the height of sophistication and style (myself included).

in Desserts / Holiday / Recipe 4 comments

by Russell Warnick

Brownies with a Special Kick

A month has passed since the start of spring which means your window boxes should be coming along quite nicely, perhaps enough for you to pick that basil or other herbed substance of your choosing. Having moved house this past weekend I have only just planted my selection of herbs (basil, mint and cilantro) so I wont be getting my fingers green for another few weeks, but that didn’t stop me thinking about today’s unofficial holiday.

What better way for you to make use of your fresh herbs than to use them in a freshly baked batch of brownies? I chose to celebrate with a handful of basil from my local grocery store, but you on the other hand can go all out and throw in whatever you have lying around in your window box, refrigerator or sock drawer.

The basil provides a subtle freshness to the cake, nothing too overwhelming or off-putting for those brownie purists.

in Desserts / Holiday / Recipe 2 comments

by Borracho

Peeps Ceviche

At first it seemed like a challenge straight out of Chopped. With Easter fast approaching, the ES crew put our minds to the task of concocting recipes from that prototypical Easter candy: Peeps. Running through the possibilities of pureeing, broiling or melting the marshmallow-y treats, I decided to stick to a raw application so that my kitchen wouldn’t become an even bigger mess than it usually is.

So sticking with the raw idea, I settled on peeps ceviche. Typical ceviche in it’s simplest form is a dish of of raw fish marinated in citrus and spiced with chili peppers. With that as a starting point it was fairly easy to come up with a plan for a sweet Peeps “ceviche” dish.

in Holiday / Recipe 2 comments

by forkitude

There Better Be Room In Your Easter Basket

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt. –Charles M. Schultz

Dear Vosges,

You have really captured my heart this time. You made my Valentine’s Day special with your kumamoto oyster truffle and Sweet Coquette Truffle Collection. But this April, I have really fallen in love.

Starting with the dense, and I mean dense, toffee bunny: those ears are just asking to be bitten off. This is not one of those weak, hollow, fake chocolate bunnies that cause disappointment on children’s faces at the first empty bite. This is a grownup bunny for grownup chocolate freaks. Full of delicious, 43% deep milk chocolate, the tiniest of butter toffee specks and finished with pink Himalayan salt. Sometimes, it’s good to be a grownup.

in Desserts / Holiday 0 comments

by gansie

Corn Syrup: Ruining Passover

Long before the war on corn syrup became public in the case of Michael Pollan vs. Corn Refiners Association, I despised the stuff. But only for 8 days out of the year.

For Passover, which starts sundown on Monday, observant Jews are not to eat leavened bread, legumes, corn, rice and most other grains. It’s tough. But it’s made all the more difficult when my favorite foods as a child were laced with high fructose corn syrup.

I couldn’t chew regular gum, couldn’t bathe my pancakes in syrup (we used Aunt Jemima, but I think real maple syrup would be okay?) couldn’t squirt ketchup on my fries, couldn’t drink Coke, couldn’t indulge in coffee ice cream and the list goes on. I never understood what corn syrup was or why it was in EVERYTHING. But I fucking hated it because it made Passover that much worse. I could live without bread, but without real gum?! Ugh – have you ever tried Bazooka “Jew”? It’s awful.

Anyway, it’s that time of year again when Jews commemorate the parting of the Red Sea. (And maybe this year we’ll read about it in gender neutral terms!) Here are some ideas to keep you bread and corn-syrup free for the holiday.