Natural Easter Peeps!

This is very exciting! Last Easter I made homemade chocolate eggs and bunnies. I added chocolate crisp cereal to it to make them crunchy. But, this year I decided to branch out and try peeps. You know, the crazy, bright colored marshmallow things?!

The ingredients for traditional peeps goes something like this: Sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, preservatives, yellow dye and carnauba wax eyes. Also, now there are bright pink ones and who knows what else!

Here is a basic marshallow recipe - no corn syrup involved!

Homemade Marshmallow Peeps


2 tablespoons boxed unflavored gelatin (2 packets)
8 tablespoons cold water
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup cold water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Grease your molds. I used some aluminum molds and some silicone. You need enough to put one whole recipe in molds at once as soon as it's whipped. I greased mine with approved cooking spray, but you could easily just rub some oil in the molds with a paper towel. Set molds aside once they're greased and ready to go.

2. In a small bowl, soak gelatin and 8 tablespoons of cold water. Set aside.

3. Combine granulated sugar and 1/2 cup of water in a large heavy saucepan.

4. Cook and stir over medium heat until dissolved. Add gelatin and bring to a boil.

5. Remove from heat. Pour into a large bowl and let stand until partially cool.

6. Add salt and vanilla extract. Beat with an electric mixer until soft and double in volume. You have to beat it for quite a few minutes and this is where a stand mixer really comes in handy. Set it on high and let it go for 5 minutes or maybe more...until it's white and double in volume.

7. Pour marshmallow creme into molds. Actually, it's more like scooping it with a big spoon carefully into each mold.

8. While the marshmallow sets (will take about 20 minutes or more), prepare the dusting sugar. I used India Tree decorating sugar. I had blue and pink. I cleaned my coffee grinder out really well and put some of the decorating sugar in it (it's granules are too big) and ground it finer. Then I put it in a bowl and added some regular white sugar to make it go further. Also, I made one bowl with regular white sugar, added a few sprinkles of turmeric and then a couple drops of chlorophyl. This became a nice yellow! And I used a few all natural jelly beans on a couple of peeps for eyes, but they were really too big.

9. Marshmallows should be easy to remove from molds if they were greased well. Then, dip them in the prepared decorating sugar and place on a wax paper lined tray. Do you see how I made a couple of them tie-dyed? I thought they were cute.

10. Don't eat too many! Save some for the kids!