As Easter Sunday creeps closer, Gut Check dreams of baskets piled high with pastel-colored candies, chocolate shaped like baby animals and, oh sweet Jesus, Cadbury eggs. We remember well the ritual of sorting the bounty bestowed by the big, weird Easter Bunny: Would it be good stuff...or crap?
Want to avoid the inevitable disappointment of unsatisfying, subpar Easter candy? Check out our take on the 5 Best and Worst Easter Treats, which we'll trot out each day as the holiday approaches...
Worst Easter Candy Countdown, No. 5: Peeps Given the amount of bandwidth devoted to dressing up Peeps in tiny costumes, one would think that a significant portion of the population loves this borderline-toxic mutation of the noble marshmallow. Gut Check, however, isn't buying the sugarcoated hype. For our money, Peeps hardly resemble baby chicks or bunnies; they more closely resemble what we imagine unicorn poop would look like. Even the name of the manufacturer, Just Born, gives us the creeps.
On a recent foray to a fine drinking establishment, Gut Check surveyed a sample of patrons at the bar, including the bartender. Eleven out of twelve sane tastemakers agreed: Peeps are gross.
The lone Peep lover admitted that his fondness for has more to do with childhood memories than flavor. (Gut Check harbors no such sentimental attachment.) Now that the people behind Peeps are pumping out Halloween-themed Peeps and Christmas-inspired Peeps, he added, some of the charm has worn off.
In addition to attempting to wedge Peeps into non-Easter holidays, Just Born has dragged poor, innocent chocolate to its abomination. Gut Check tried to approach this development with an open mind, but there's no escaping the fact that chocolate-dipped Peeps taste like Styrofoam dipped in cheap milk chocolate. Then there's the chocolate-covered Peep, which involves more cheap chocolate enrobing a freakishly bright yellow marshmallow center. (In case you're wondering, dipped : covered :: nauseated : projectile vomiting.)
Somewhat inexplicably (and frequently against our will), Gut Check possesses a powerful waste-not-want-not ethos when it comes to food. When faced with problematic substances, we tend to employ the venerable "bury the peas in the mashed potatoes" strategy. This explains why we dug a graham cracker out of the cupboard, diced some good dark chocolate and sprinkled it on, topped it off with a Peep and popped it in the microwave.
The resulting s'more wasn't too bad, but the best part was watching the microwave radiation batter the Peep into submission. The process of puff, coil, writhe and die seemed a fitting fate.
