It’s Easter. You will have a surplus of peeps, jellybeans and time. We can work with this.
It’s nearly impossible to resist the lure of Angry Birds on Easter. Kids are hunting for eggs, the Cadbury bunny smuggled you some chocolate filled treats, and you need something easily interruptable to pass the time between juvenile sugar rushes and egg discoveries.
Get a knife.
It’s not for the kids. Let them run around a little longer and they’ll burn off all the pineapple glazed ham and jellybeans they stuffed into their faces at lunch. You’re going to impress their parents with a special grown up level of Angry Birds. All you need is one of the gazillion yellow peeps ubiquitous on Easter, an orange jellybean, a knife, a ball point pen cap, and most of all, a sweet martini.
I use the bunny shaped peeps for ease. Turn one over so you can’t look into it’s innocent little eyes as you use your palm to smash it as flat as possible. It’ll bounce back a little, but you know even though it doesn’t have any bones to snap, its spirit is broken inside.
I happen to have way too many tiny geometric shapes in my life. If you have a little triangle cookie cutter, use it to punch through your peep. If you’re among the saner portion of the population, you’re probably going to use that knife I told you to grab. Either way works equally well. The knife is a little slower, which is useful if you need the rest of the peep’s family to remember that this is what happens if they cross you.
Now that you have a triangle, you need a pair of eyes. Punch something round through a flatish piece of peep. I happened to use a pen cap. I could try to pretend the pen is somehow intrinsically superior to a straw, but you’d see right through my lies. Use a straw if you’ve got it. Whatever it takes, just make yourself two little ocular nubs.
Since Angry Birds don’t have flaming yellow eyes, go ahead and use that knife to cut off the yellow sugar crust. You should now have a nice little round(ish) wad of marshmallow.
Shove your newly created eyes onto your Angry Bird’s triangular yellow body.
Next comes the beak. Use this as an excuse to dig through an entire bag of jellybeans for your favorite flavor. At some point, between stuffing them in your cheeks, you should come out with an orange one. Slice it lengthwise, trim off one end, and pinch the other into a triangular shape.
Use your nice, pointy knife to cut a small slit just under the Angry Bird’s eyes. Shove the back of your orange jelly bean half in there and suddenly you have achieved beakness.
To complete the effect, carefully push the wide, bottom end of your triangular yellow Angry Bird down over a full martini glass. You might have to slice a good third of the way through his body to get him to stick. That’s okay. The Angry Bird deserves it. He knows why.
I think these are great with a home made lemon drop (or at least home made lemonade spiked with rum and a splash of orange liqueur.) They’re also tasty with whatever raspberry/pomegranate/blood red colored superfruit of the week you’re using to mask all the vodka. If you really feel in the spirit of the season, drop your newly made Angry Bird in the middle of a chocolate martini and tell people your Cadbury Creme Egge just hatched.