Oh, PEEPS. How silly, iconic, sweet, ubiquitous and a little bizarre you are. I know you arrive at every season, but Easter is really where you shine. Take your spotlight, Peeps. Enjoy it. Just don’t get too close to the spotlight (those things pack a lot of heat). When Michelle from Sugar Swings! Serve Some and Christi of Love From the Oven invited me to join them and fellow bloggers in a Peeps extravaganza, the Spring Hop Along PEEPS Party, the answer was kind of a no-brainer. Duh. Of course. We’re talking Peeps here. Be sure to hop along to everyone’s post, and there’s even a PEEPtastic GIVEAWAY!!

Scroll to the end of the post for all the links to the PEEPs party and for the GIVEAWAY details.

I went out and bought a plethora of PEEPS bunnies. I’ll call these Peeps bunnies in chocolate pudding egg shells. Seems a mouthful (literally, that’s how you have to eat them), but I can think of no better description. Peeps bunnies in chocolate eggs? Probably better. They are pretty easy to make, too.

how to make Peeps bunnies in chocolate eggs

you will need:*

Peeps bunnies

Wilton brownie pop silicone mold

semi-sweet chocolate chips

disposable decorating bags

paint brush

scissors

green candy melts

baking tray

wax paper

pudding or mousse

small spoon

royal icing flowers (optional)

*Find the brownie mold, disposable decorating bags, paint brush and candy melts at the craft store. I just piped the flowers with leftover royal icing I had, but you can also purchase pre-made flowers at the craft store.

step one: make your chocolate eggs

Place just over half a cup of chocolate chips in a disposable decorating bag. Melt in the microwave at 60 percent power for 90 seconds. Repeat at 30 second intervals until the chocolate is completely melted. Snip 1/4-inch from the tip and pipe a dollop of chocolate in a cavity of the brownie mold. Use the paint brush to brush the chocolate about 3/4 of the way up the sides. I used a good bit of chocolate to minimize breakage. A half of cup of chips should fill 8 cavities of the mold. Place in the fridge to harden about two hours. Carefully pop the chocolate eggs out of the mold and store in the fridge.

step two: make your grass

Line a baking tray with wax paper. Follow the same instructions above to melt green candy melts in a disposable decorating bag. Snip 1/4-inch from the end, and working with one egg at a time, loosely pipe a blob for grass and set a chocolate egg on top. Repeat with all the eggs and let set in the fridge to harden. If desired, add royal icing flowers before the candy melts harden, or pipe them after they harden.

step three: assemble your Peeps in eggs

Place a dollop of pudding or mousse in each egg. Snip the bottom off of a bunny and place in the cup.

 The Spring Hop Along PEEPS Party!!!

Be sure to visit all of the stops on the Hop Along PEEPS party! Here is the crew of talented bloggers knee deep in PEEPS.

And now… THE GIVEAWAY!!!

Our fabulous hosts, Sugar Swings! Serve Some and Love from the Oven, are giving away this PEEPS packed prize package.

Open to US Residents Only.  Use the Rafflecopter Widget below to enter, please remember it can be slow to load.  Good luck! Click here to enter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tweet

Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

I haven’t been up to Costco in a bit (note to self: Get up to Costco), but my father, who lives down the street from his Costco, hits the place regularly. And let me tell you, he was pretty darn proud to see his kid in the December 2012 issue of Costco’s Simply Delicious: The Costco Way. (And PS. it was my now-tech savvy Dad who found the online link.) Way back in the summertime, Costco contacted me to contribute to this recipe-packed book, and I jumped at the chance. I’m humbled by the talent I share space with in the “Chef’s Choice” section of the cookbook, including Joy the Baker, Ree Drummond, and Mark Bittman. My assignment? Create recipes with those huge, Kirkland Brand muffins–I got to buy every flavor and taste test tons of recipes, lucky me–and with their sheet cake–even luckier me for eating a whole cake.

I created Muffin “Fries” with Sea Salt and Honey Yogurt Dip and Sheet Cake Cookie Crisps. And they are easy. Very easy. For the cookies, all you do is mush up leftover sheet cake from Costco (not the custard filled kind, the icing filled kind), scoop on a tray and bake. So good!

For the recipes, check out Costco’s Simply Delicious: The Costco Way, p. 120 to 121, or,

CLICK HERE To see the online version.

These photos are mine, by the way. Costco’s are WAY better!

Tweet

Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

Anybody remember that Staples commercial not too many years ago? The Christmas carol, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” plays as a man skips gleefully through the aisles of the store. Behind him, we see (presumably) his two kids trudging through the aisles of the store, miserable. Back to school supplies shopping. Now that I’m not one of those kids, but the parent of one of those kids, I fully appreciate that commercial. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year when I can be free of, I mean, send my darling back to school. Oh, we’ve had a fun summer together, and as baby X is arriving soon, I’m glad we had so many days together to do so many things. So. Very. Many. Days. But as summer winds down, I’m going crazier and we are becoming more and more boring, and I just can’t bear another episode of My Little Pony (or seeing her brain whither away because I’m too exhausted to inspire her in other ways).  So I welcome you, school, with open arms.

I quickly hopped on board the Back to School Bake-Off, hosted by Sprinkles & Grins with Best Friends for Frosting. I got a box filled with more goodness than you can imagine to inspire a fun back-to-school treat. (I found icing and sprinkles and gems, oh my!) Check out all the Sprinkles & Grins products HERE. You must see what all of the clever bloggers did with their boxes. Flashcard cupcakes, lunch note treats, snack pops, cake pops, hand pies, oh my again!

And you, too, can enter for a chance to win a year’s supply of dessert decorating products from Sprinkles & Grins!  The contest runs from September 4th to the 27th, so I’ll be sure to remind you when it starts. Just enter a recipe and photo for cupcakes, cake pops, brownies, cereal treats or cookies using at least one Sprinkles & Grins/Signature Brands product and you could be swimming in sprinkles and icing and frosting. For contest details CLICK HERE.

These bite-size gold star cookie jars are super duper easy to make. I used Betty Crocker’s sugar cookie mix and cut out all the tiny stars. Then I decorated them with Betty Crocker’s White Decorating Cookie Icing and Cake Mate Glitter Gold Cupcake Gems. Once they dried, I packaged them in mason jars, adding notes from this free back to school printable I made so it’s clear that they are meant as a reward for a job well done.

For full how-tos to make the gold star cookie jars, CLICK HERE.

 Tweet

Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

Gasp! Did you all know that Hostess filed for Chapter 11? I learned this from the source of all my (sweet) news, CakeSpy. She reposted her popular collection, “51 Ways to Kill a Twinkie” (that, by the way, I remember well and I featured it over at Edible Crafts back in ’08!).

I don’t have anything quite so hilarious in my vault, but I do have these Hostess-themed cookies I made almost two years ago. Twinkies, HoHos, SnoBalls and CupCakes, in cookie (and cookie pops) form.

Tweet

Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

As promised on Saturday, a peek inside Sugarlicious with a Christmas idea from the book. It’s starting to get real, seeing it all put together like this. Yikes, if I get butterflies opening a pdf, imagine how I’ll be opening that first box when I get the book!

Given the clock is now counting down rapidly to the big day, these are a great last-minute treat. You can use store-bought frozen pound cake cut into circles, or use Oreo Cakesters, like I did HERE many moons ago, when I first came up with the idea. Wrap the petits fours with fondant, then use my royal icing recipe to decorate.

Enjoy!  (Click to enlarge, or click HERE to view pdf.)

Tweet

Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!