An average of 5.5 million Peeps are produced daily and 1,680 Jelly Belly jelly beans are made every second.
Sure, chocolate eggs are delicious, but what is Easter without marshmallow chicks or flavored jelly beans?
To find out more about how some of our favorite Easter candies are made, InsideEdition.com spoke to Jeff Brown, of the Jelly Belly Candy Company.
"It’s definitely more involved than people realize," Brown said. "Easter is our biggest time of year. We have estimated about five billion Jelly Belly beans will be consumed at Easter."
Candy makers begin by creating what they call a "slurry," a hot liquid made of cornstarch, sugar, water and corn syrup. They then add flavors and colors into the mixture, to create the center of the jelly bean.
"What we think makes a really good jelly bean is something that is just a very, very true-to-life flavor," Brown explained. "Something that you’d pop in your mouth, and you know right away, 'That’s butter popcorn,' or, 'That’s very cherry.'"
The mixture then gets poured into a machine that molds the shape of the bean.
After hardening overnight in a dry room, each bean goes through a steam bath and a sugar shower to create the hard candy shell.
Each bean goes through several more coats of syrup, confectioner’s glaze and beeswax with several days' rest in between each layer before the words "Jelly Belly" are printed on the bean and they are ready for packaging
From beginning to end, the entire process takes about two weeks, Brown explained.
"What’s really special for us this Easter is it falls on April Fools' Day," Brown said. "And for us we have this great line of 'Bean Boozled' beans which are these gross-flavored beans."
As for Peeps, the beloved chick-shaped marshmallow, it’s all treat, no tricks.
A popular non-chocolate Easter option, Peeps begins similarly, with a sugar mixture combined with dye, then molded into a chick or a bunny.
The formed marshmallow is then given a sugar shower before it is stamped with features like little beady eyes.
After the candy cools, the Peeps are boxed up and ready to be sold.
The entire process takes about six minutes — a significant improvement from the process in 1953, where it took more than 27 hours to create just one marshmallow chick by hand.
While the marshmallow candy comes in several different flavors, the most popular by far is the yellow.
And, if you think you’ve had your fill of candy this Easter, an average of 5.5. million Peeps are produced daily and 1,680 Jelly Belly jelly beans are produced each second, so there’s always more for tomorrow.
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