You’ve been really good. No candy for 40 days. OK, maybe you snuck a Snickers one weekend, but overall you’ve been very disciplined. But this Sunday, your Lenten fast is over, and it’s time to give your sweet tooth a workout. And confectioners all over the US are only too happy to oblige. Easter is second only to Halloween as the biggest bonanza season for candy makers, and beats out Valentine’s Day and Christmas by a wide margin. In 2003, American consumers spent $1.8 billion on Easter candy. Although the usual candy brands like M&Ms and Reese’s Cups try to wheedle their way into Easter baskets by coming out with special holiday colors and packaging, they simply cannot compete with the top three Easter confections.
A recent Internet poll says that chocolate bunnies are the top Easter favorite, with 37.2 percent of the vote. Jelly beans are second with 30.7 percent, and marshmallow Peeps pipe up with 23.4 percent. What’s the skinny on these perennial holiday favorites?
The bunny as an Easter symbol was first mentioned in writing by the Germans in the 1500s, and the first edible Easter bunnies were made in Germany in the early 1800s. Rather than chocolate, they were sweet pastries. Stephen Whitman (as in Whitman’s Samplers) was one of the first American confectioners to make chocolate Easter bunnies. More than 90 million dark, milk, and white chocolate bunnies are sold during Easter season. The ears of 76 percent of those bunnies will be bitten off before any other bunny body part. Besides bunnies, you can get chocolate chicks and ducks, chocolate crosses, and a wide assortment of other chocolate creations. One year I got a chocolate elephant (the trunk was the first to go), and my sister got a chocolate Fred Flintstone. Bunnies, however, are by far the best.
Second on the Easter hit parade are jelly beans. Although the exact origin is unknown, jelly beans are thought to have descended from the Mid-Eastern confection Turkish Delight that has been around since Biblical times. Jelly beans began appearing as a popular penny candy in America in the 1860s, and they became part of Easter traditions in the 1930s. Each Easter season, more than 16 billion jelly beans are sold, and at least 3.5 billion get lost forever in that green cellophane grass that lines Easter baskets. In 1976, Jelly Belly, now “the world’s #1 gourmet jelly bean,” introduced its first eight flavors and currently has 50 official flavors that are made year-round plus special holiday flavors. New flavors are constantly developed. This year’s “rookie” flavors are Apricot, Cinnamon Toast, Buttered Toast, and — are you ready? — Roasted Garlic.
Peeps are made of marshmallow (it’s actually a plant), sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, and a few other ingredients. Chick-shaped peeps are the most popular, but you can also get them bunny-shaped. The little critters come in yellow, white, lavender, blue and pink. The Just Born company makes Peeps for other holidays, too, but they pump out the chicks all year long. As many as 2 million Peeps can be made each day, and that’s a good thing — sales of Peeps Easter products will top 600 million this year.
Follow tradition and devour the sweet contents of that Easter basket. Just remember — ears first!
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.
