Flickr/TBoard

Peeps

For many people, Easter means church services, maybe watching Judy Garland and Fred Astaire circa 1948 in Easter Parade, Sunday brunch, decorating eggs and orchestrating an egg hunt in the backyard. For others, the holiday is synonymous with those neon yellow duck-shaped marshmallows called Peeps.

Peeps, which were reportedly invented in the 1950s by a Russian immigrant candy-maker, are addictive little things -- and not because they taste good. They do not. People obsess over them because they come in many bright colors, and more importantly, they blow up when you put them in a microwave. Of course so do normal marshmallows, but what fun is that.

So, on the occasion of Easter Sunday, which is this weekend, we thought we'd assemble 10 of the best Peeps YouTube videos we could find. Because not only is blowing up little yellow ducks fun, but making videos of it is apparently pretty hilarious too. There are, unsurprisingly, many microwaves in these videos, but some creative stuff too. South Park. Australian rules football. The Birds. Turn the page.

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jgarbee

Modernist Painting with Ococoa Chocolates

Surely there is a Duff Goldman of chocolate out there somewhere. But all of the real-time chocolatiers (sorry, Willy Wonka doesn't count in our book) we've spent tasting time with, including Diana Malouf, owner of Ococoa, have more temperate personalities -- a compliment. Measured, focused and with a patience that bodes well in the confectioner's kitchen, where precision is essential. Kind-hearted, too, perhaps partly the result of the contentment that a life of making chocolate brings.

If you strip away the tired cliché, it actually makes a box of chocolate seem fitting for Valentine's Day, even at this early January hour (some of us prefer to go directly from holiday cookies to chocolate, skipping the diet talk altogether). Get more on Ococoa chocolate after the jump.

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James Bartlett

candy vending machines

The holidays are the ideal -- and perfectly acceptable -- time for kids of all ages to chow down on chocolate, crunch candy and basically indulge your sweet teeth. At the new Sweet! Hollywood candy emporium at Hollywood & Highland, which soft-opened in November, you can literally do this; there's a large white chocolate molar ready and waiting for you.

Inspired by the weird world of Willy Wonka -- the Wonka boutique is here, complete with everything Nerd, chocolate crayons that actually write and many more exclusive individual choc treats, as well as a one-minute-he's-there-the-next-he's-not, Depp-ish Wonka himself -- this extravaganza features 12 themed boutiques over 30,000 square feet.

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via Kevin Champeny

Gummi Bear "Candielier"

Looking for a chandelier to brighten up your dining room? How about one made from over 3,000 multi-colored gummy bears.

New York-based artist Kevin Champeny has designed a what are being dubbed "Candeliers" from acrylic gummy bears strung onto see-through wires (don't get your hopes up, it's non-edible).

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E. Dwass

Candy wrappers can be recycled

Some of us are feeling a tad guilty about eating the kids' Halloween treats. Well, here's a way to atone -- we can recycle all those candy wrappers through an ongoing partnership between Mars candy and the eco-friendly company TerraCycle.

"It's a free collection program for all kinds of candy wrappers, regardless of brands, regardless of type," said TerraCycle public relations manager Stacey Krauss.

In a phone interview, Krauss told us how easy it is to help both the planet and the charity of your choice by joining the "candy wrapper brigade." Simply sign up on the TerraCycle website and designate which nonprofit you would like to receive the funds or points earned.

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Flickr/R.E.~

I want candy

Want to be the Gordon Gecko for halloween sweets? Then check out this video from Buzzfeed that breakdowns the relative value of candy trades, a deliberate and intense science that had us pondering how to maximize our Reese's and Butterfingers counts as trick-or-treaters.

Basically, all halloween candy can be broken down into three groups: Nut-Based/Crunch, Fillings/Soft-Centered, and Fruits/Sours. Knowing your trading partners' preferences, as well as your own, is crucial to mastering the game.

Candy trading practices can even broken down into laws of Marxism, Keynesian economics, and heaven-forbid Reaganomics -- which places a very high emphasis on jelly beans. Just make sure that you don't get conned into some candy corn, which is a negative asset for sure.

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B. Rodell

Dylan's Candy Bar at the Grove

To a 9-year-old, $10 is a lot of money. It's five weeks' worth of allowance (if all your chores are done). It's the kind of sum you only come across in one fell swoop occasionally, perhaps tumbling out of a birthday card from great-grandparents, or given as spending money at some Disney resort shop.

Dylan's Candy Bar at The Grove was the site, on a recent afternoon, for one such spending-money occasion for one 9-year-old boy. The store, a recently opened expansion of the New York-based chain owned by Dylan Lauren (Ralph's daughter), offers a rainbow-colored spectacle, an overwhelming of the senses that's impossible to take in all at once. At first, it immobilized the 9-year-old, who stood unmoving near the entrance. But he soon spun off to the left, pulled toward a table that held lollipops in the shape of steaks, lobster claws and raw chickens. "Aw, nice!" he exclaimed. "Pickle gumballs!! And bacon-flavored toothpicks. That's awesome."

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Prospect Park Books

Little Flower Cookbook

We've read a lot of cookbook Introductions over the years, but Christine Moore's Intro to Little Flower: Recipes From the Café, her first cookbook, gave us pause. Most begin with the joyous side of the author's kitchen endeavors, with promises of the flavorful journey that you, too, will herein begin. To be expected, as Introductions are sales pitches of sorts: Personal reflections to tempt you to buy the book. That today so many cookbook authors seem more concerned about their always-sunny social media reputations rather than perfecting that pear and quince crumble (p. 129) has only made many all the more sugar-coated.

Not Moore, who by the second paragraph is delving into frank discussions of her deep-rooted personal struggles, from family to finances, happening at the very moment she was handed the keys to her new café and retail shop on Colorado Boulevard, Little Flower Candy Company Café. It's a compelling reminder of the kind of drive, and sheer good luck, it takes to turn a great sea salt caramel idea into a successful food business. The book?

If anyone can convince us to make pumpkin bread pudding with salted caramel sauce (p. 133) in 90-degree-plus weather, it is the woman behind Pasadena's infamous sea salt caramels. Get more, and the recipe, after the jump.

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astoldbytanner

Candy Corn Oreos

There's an old Louis Black stand-up rant where he theorizes that all the candy corn that was ever made was created in 1911 -- and it simply gets recycled by the candy corn companies year after year, like the Halloween version of the eternally forwarded Christmas fruitcake.

Yes, candy corn sucks. Especially when you eat too much of it (which is really any amount greater than one). But the candy scientists over at the National Confectioner's Association report that nearly 20 million pounds of the stuff is sold each year. Who is buying all that candy corn?

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Barbara Hansen

Charm City Cakes truffles

That proverbial kid in a candy shop would have fought like crazy to get into last night's grand opening of Charm City Cakes West. The slightly older party crowd could take all they wanted from a massive display of Godiva cake truffles -- hundreds of them.

Introduced Sept. 1, the truffles are the latest product from Charm City Cakes' Duff Goldman in collaboration with Godiva chocolates. There's no cake in the truffles. They're pure chocolate but with cake flavors, like one based on the fruity hummingbird cake of the Old South. Another is birthday-cake pink, with white sprinkles.

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