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When I was a little girl, my favorite treat to find in my basket on Easter morning were those pink and yellow marshmallow bunnies and chicks, better known as peeps.
Boxes and boxes of those marshmallow peeps in every color of the rainbow are lined up just inside the entrance of most grocery stores right about now to encourage Moms and Dads to choose the grab and go approach to filling their children’s Easter baskets.
I must admit that I still love those little critters. I just no longer indulge now that I know what’s in them! It’s a truly stomach-turning list of ingredients: artificial flavors, colors, and high fructose corn syrup among other unpronounceables. Definitely not something I can in good conscience give to my children on a special day that they will cherish and remember as grown-ups and perhaps mimic my behavior with their own children!
I’ve wanted to find a healthier alternative to those chemical peeps for a very long time. It wasn’t until recently that I found a recipe that is truly delicious and safe!
Homemade Peeps
The marshmallows from the following recipe contain only four ingredients! They are just as tasty as the fake ones from the store (verdict from my kids). This is important as I have tried the “healthy” marshmallows from the health food store in the past. My kids thought they were gross, not to mention expensive.
These homemade marshmallows (that are easily made into peeps) are also excellent to put on a stick and roast over an open fire. They work for s’mores too!
We have a fire pit in our backyard and roasting marshmallows is something we really enjoy doing for birthday parties or just hanging out as a family on a cool evening.
I am so glad I finally can make marshmallows that taste good and don’t have a bunch of chemicals and high fructose corn syrup in them! I realize this recipe has organic white sugar in it, but marshmallows are white, after all!
Some natural alternatives to white sugar include rice syrup or cassava syrup as they are both light-colored. However, I haven’t yet tried them to know for sure if they would work or taste good. Do not use beet sugar or nonorganic white sugar for this recipe as they are almost always GMO in North America.
Probably the best solution is to use date syrup and make fruit-sweetened peeps! They would be brown-colored, but hey, some bunnies are brown, right?
Thanks so much to Linda DeFever, a personal trainer and fellow Chapter Leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation in Wauconda, Illinois, for generously sharing this basic recipe!
Homemade Easter Peeps Recipe
Easy recipe for homemade Easter peeps, a healthy and fun alternative to commercial brands at the supermarket with questionable ingredients. Only 4 ingredients!
Ingredients
- 1 cup filtered water
- 3 Tbl gelatin
- 2 cups organic white sugar
- nontoxic food coloring
Instructions
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Place 1/2 cup water in a large bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it in an even manner. Let it sit for a few minutes and then begin the next steps.
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Put the sugar and the other 1/2 cup of water in a small pot and bring to a boil while stirring. Once the mixture is a rolling boil (or 242 F/ 117 C with a digital food thermometer), pour the hot sugar water mixture over the gelatin/water mixture and beat with an electric mixer for about 10 minutes until the combined mixture turns into marshmallow with peaks.
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If adding optional food coloring, add required amount to achieve desired color during the whipping phase with the electric mixer.
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Pour marshmallow mixture into a 9x13 glass dish that has been coated with a tiny drizzle of coconut oil to prevent sticking.
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Let it sit out for several hours and up to 12 hours until firm.
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Remove marshmallow from dish in one large piece and cut out desired peeps shapes with kitchen scissors or press out shapes with small stainless steel bunny cookie cutters.
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If using marshmallows for roasting over a fire, simply cut into rectangles.
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Store marshmallows and/or peeps in an airtight container in the pantry.
I used to buy those, too. But only the white ones!! So I at least avoided the artificial colors. I do buy the natural marshmallows occassionally – I only use a few in my 6.5 year old’s cocoa. It will be nice to make homemade ones for him. Thanks for the recipe.
I have used rice syrup as a sweetener and they marshmallows were fabulous indeed!
Thanks Rachel. I’ve been wanting to try it but was afraid to as rice syrup is so expensive and I didn’t want to waste 2 whole cups on a major flop!
oh thanks for this recipe. i have been searching for alternatives in the grocery store for her Easter basket and as you know there is barely anything without artificial colors or other stuff i won’t give my child. so frustrating!! i didn’t know they made white peeps!
Thanks for posting this. I had gotten the recipe from Linda last year and made them for a camping trip but I wasn’t sure where I put the recipe since then and I need to make marshmallows for this weekend. We always do Resurrection Treats for Easter. What’s the possibility you have a recipe that is a replacement for the nasty crescent rolls that come in a can? That is the other ingredient in the Resurrection Treat I haven’t been able to find a good substitute for.
Barbara, I do! Try these:
http://simplyrealfood.blogspot.com/2010/02/healthy-crescent-dogs.html
These marshmallows sound great. Somebody commented that the gelatin you use is especially good because it’s kosher. However, kosher products are not always as healthy as people think. Reisman’s and Irene’s make kosher pastries that still use hydrogenated fats in them.
A guy I work with as a fitness insturctor and also a WAP member suggested Bernard Jensen’s gelatin powder. I’ll try the Great Lakes brand the next time.
Bernard Jensen’s is excellent as well. I’ve used both that one and Great Lakes with success.
Sarah,
I just checked with NOW Foods. They said that their bottled and bagged bulk gelatine (bottled is a 1 lb container. The bagged is 5 lbs.) is not hydrolyzed. By the way, I did not get a notification in my email when you replied to my comment below. Thought you might like to know.
Thanks! My kids love peeps. I will have to try these w the sugar alternatives that we can have.
I am wondering about the non-hydrolyzed gelatin. How can you tell if your gelatin is hydrolyzed or not?
Is there a healthy crystalized sugar that would give the same crunchy effect as peeps? Definitely will try this recipe … thanks Sarah 🙂
Thanks for this, Sarah. Sounds like such an easy recipe, too. Can’t wait to try it – I love the light and fluffy-ness of marshmallows. They are a family favorite roasted over a campfire for us as well. I plan to make a few batches of this next time we all get together, if not for an Easter treat! :-p Mhmmm!!
This recipe is especially cool to me because I’ve tried to make cookies and treats using healthier ingredients. But, I finally resigned myself to the fact that for the rare times that I make sugary treats, I’ll just use the regular ingredients – due to taste complaints (when I make a healthy version) and due to the cost/time of using/making the healthier ingredients. There is nothing worse than making a “healthy” junk food treat for that special occasion that no one wants to eat that cost you a fortune to make!
But, this is definitely an exception in my book! 🙂
If you want an alternative to the crescent rolls for Ressurrection Rolls use the Yogurt Dough in Nourishing Traditions! It’s a great pastry dough IMO! Thanks for this recipe! Can’t wait to make it!
Wow! This is great. Thanks for posting this recipe. What do you use for food coloring? Of course I could just stick with white.
Hi Linda, the healthfood store has some natural food colorings in the same baking section as the vanilla, chocolate extract etc … I prefer just white but someone below mentioned beet powder as a food dye also.
Thanks for the tips Sarah. I have not found chocolate extract anywhere, but I’ll keep the others in mind.
I posted a few ideas recently for other natural food colorings: blue, green and pink. For green I used dried parsley and for pink we used beets. Perhaps beet juice would work if you didn’t use a lot. For yellow you could use turmeric, but not too much as it may affect the taste. Here is the info on making blue food coloring:
http://wholenewmom.com/recipes/natural-blue-food-coloring-dye-just-in-time-for-easter/.
When I want to color any food, my organic beet root powder works GREAT for pink, and it’s on the sweet side, so it doesn’t ever affect anything I’m making (since it’s not too noticeably sweet). For green, just a pinch of organic spirulina powder works (just not too much, since that flavor is intense!). And turmeric for yellow. Since they’re all powders, I would think you could just mix them in with the sugar before adding liquid. BulkHerbStore.com is where I get mine, their prices are great!