Pandemic Peeps

Well I have about 3 hours left of free time before I go into crazy work mode for my job for the next month.  I’m trying to get our Halloween costumes as done as possible before then, so this is going to be a short post.  This is kind of a silly post.  My co-worker, Roger, mysteriously started getting stale peeps delivered to his cubicle months after Easter for no apparent reason.  Others interpreted this as a love of peeps and over the next couple years more peeps were added to the collection.  Soon Roger had a stack of peeps on his desk 3 feet high.

As you know, for his sabbatical, someone made his cubicle into a giant box of peeps.  That was 5 years ago and over the next couple years a strange holiday or colored box of peeps was known to show up on his desk.  Then the pandemic hit and Roger and his (now extremely stale) peeps have been parted for far too long.  Someone decided this might be the time to remedy this and bought some peeps for Easter.  The peeps purchased at Easter were horrifying.  The quality control in 2021 was pretty bad, and of the peeps I was even able to find, all 3 batches had really strange eyes.  Like cyclops.  Not quite as bad as the conversation hearts, but still off-putting.

The contents of my box of 2021 Conversation Hearts. I’m not sure what type of conversation you’d be having with these, but it might involve a seizure.

These guys are like the flounders of the peeps world

These guys are just straight up cyclops.

I was not discouraged though.  I gracefully aged the peeps the prescribed 6 months necessary for ultimate inedibility.  By that point Julius had opened and sneakily tasted one of the peeps in one of the packages.  This was the package of peeps with the worse quality control so no concern there!  By September it was finally time to put my plan into action.  I had made a batch of royal icing (for cookie decorating) so I piped tiny masks onto a piece of parchment paper and let them harden for 24 hours.   Then I used a bit more royal icing to glue them to the peeps beaks.  Here is where the real genius came in – I couldn’t figure out how to get the little mask strings to stay on the peeps, and Amy suggested white chocolate!  I heated up some white chocolate in the microwave and piped on a pinprick sized set of mask elastics.  I then used my food sealer to seal the package back up.

Piped some masks

The genius white frosting mask strings.

Then, because I still haven’t had time to get to the USPS, they have been sitting on our counter for 2 weeks.  Sometime during that period the masks have gotten a smidge crushed.  Honestly it’s a miracle Julius hasn’t eaten them yet.  Hopefully Roger will still enjoy them, or at least be very confused when he opens them.