Featuring guest authors; crafting tips and projects; recipes from food editor and sleuthing sidekick Cloris McWerther; and decorating, travel, fashion, health, beauty, and finance tips from the rest of the American Woman editors.

Note: This site uses Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Monday, April 10, 2017

#COOKING WITH CLORIS--IT'S PEEP TIME!

It’s that time of year again. Time for April showers, spring flowers, and…Peeps! Those ubiquitous yellow marshmallow chicks that are as much a part of Easter baskets as chocolate bunnies and plastic grass. Today we’re sharing some fun Peepalicious facts about Peeps.

Peeps have been around for over 60 years. They’re “hatched” in only one place on earth, at Just Born, Inc., a candy company located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

It originally took twenty-seven hours from start to finish to make Peeps because they were made by hand with pastry tubes and needed hours to cool before they could be packaged. Now, thanks to automation, Peeps can be made in about six minutes.

The factory produces about five and a half million Peeps a day in a variety of colors, flavors, and shapes, but the original yellow chicks are the most popular. In the course of a year Just Born produces enough Peeps to circle the earth twice. During Easter alone, one and a half billion Peeps are consumed, making them far more popular than any other Easter candy. (You’d think this would make Peeps the company’s bestselling candy, but you’d be wrong. That honor goes to Mike and Ike.)

We all know that on New Year’s Eve New York drops a huge Waterford crystal ball to herald in the New Year, but did you know that in Bethlehem they drop a giant Peep? It’s the traditional yellow chick, and it flashes different colors at midnight.

Not everyone eats Peeps. They’ve become the medium of choice for many artists who use them to create dioramas, sculptures, and paintings.

How many Peeps does it take to…

You’d need a line of 43,000 Peep bunnies in a straight line to span the Golden Gate Bridge. It would take 1,464 Peeps bunnies stacked on top of each other to equal the height of the Statue of Liberty, 2,664 Peeps bunnies stacked on top of each other to equal the height of the Washington Monument, and 4,840 Peep chicks stacked one on top of each other to reach the top of Seattle’s Space Needle. 

2 comments:

Angela Adams said...

My mom l-o-v-e-s Peeps! And, in an act of role reversal, I now make my senior-citizen mom an Easter basket. I have packs of Peeps in every color I can find. Waiting to go in the basket are yellow Peeps, blue, pink, and green. Am I missing any colors???? (smile!).

ANASTASIA POLLACK said...

Angela, I think it's wonderful that you now make an Easter basket for your mom! Peeps now come in many more colors: blue, pink, yellow, lavender, rainbow, green, orange, purple, white, turquoise, and even gray and black.