Choccreate custom chocolate bars are such a fun choice for Easter gifts – you get your choice of dark, milk or white chocolate, toppings and an Easter bunny or two.
The toppings make all the difference in your creation of a unique—and inexpensive—Easter gift.
Start with an Easter theme: scatter your bar with candy bunnies, chicks, ducklings or lambs.
For Easter colors, add jelly beans, M&Ms or Sunbeams.
Want to add some dried fruit? There are 22 choices, from banana chips to tart cherries.
There are 30 choices of cereals, nuts and seeds, from cornflakes (which are terrific in chocolate bars) to wasabi peanuts.
Want something pretty? There are 8 dried flower petal choices, plus gold and silver flakes.
Finish your bar with spices, from chipotle and cinnamon to mixed peppercorns and Hawaiian red sea salt.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to design chocolate bars, send an e-gift certificate and let the recipients have the fun.
Release your inner chocolatier. We combined sugar bunnies, eggs and carrots with Jelly Beans and Sunbeams. Photo by River Soma | THE NIBBLE.
The base price of the 3.5-ounce chocolate bar is $3.95. Toppings start at 45¢ each, with many at 65¢ or 75¢. Each bar comes in a gift box.
If you’re still looking for Easter candy, do something different this year. Click on over to Choccreate.com and start creating!
Want something more elaborate? Here’s our favorite artisan Easter chocolate.
April 14, 2011 at 10:29 am
· Filed under Beverages
Krups, makers of some of our favorite coffee and espresso machines and other kitchen appliances, has announced the 16 winners of its Cup O’ Joe Awards.
The awards, highlighting the best coffee shops in cities nationwide, go to:
Atlanta: Dancing Goats Café
Boston: Barismo
Chicago: Metropolis Coffee Co.
Dallas: White Rock Coffee
Los Angeles: Groundwork Coffee Co.
Miami: News Café
New York City: The Bronx, Beans and Berries; Brooklyn, Gimme! Coffee; Manhattan, MUDTruck; Queens, Sweetleaf; Staten Island, Java Den
Philadelphia: Spruce Street Espresso
San Francisco: Blue Bottle Coffee Co.
Seattle: Monorail Espresso
Washington, D.C.: M.E. Swing Co.
Noteworthy National Retailer: Peet’s Coffee & Tea
Souvenir of Chicago: A bag of Metropolis Coffee’s Redline Espresso. Photo courtesy Metropolitan Coffee Co.
Now, a trip to Philadelphia means more than the Liberty Bell, a Duck Tour and a cheeesteak. First thing each morning: Spruce Street Espresso.
Take a bite: richer flavor, smaller size, fewer calories. Photo by River Soma | THE NIBBLE.
Where do skinny L.A. ladies and gents go when they need a sweet treat?
To Skinny Batches, the creation of actress Emme Tyler. Skinny Batches’ oatmeal cookies, gingerbread loaf and “Crumbies” snacks focus on low calories, high taste and zero guilt (as long as you don’t eat the whole box). Everything is 45 calories per piece.
We ordered a shipment and found the sweet treats to be a great help in portion control. Anyone who’s been to Weight Watchers knows that this is the secret to enjoying anything you want.
Emme makes sure that the portion sizes are just right. Her snacks and desserts are so flavorful that you don’t miss a larger portion.
Coffee-cake-like Crumbies are the size of petit fours. Yet the dense cake, deep flavors and vibrant seasonings provide all the satisfaction of a much larger portion. Flavors include Chocolate Banana, Coffee, Pear and White Chocolate Berry.
Satisfying oatmeal cookies are made skinny by less sugar (very welcome!) and a flatter shape (benefit: crispier!). We didn’t try the gingerbread loaf or the Salty Janets (a sugar cookie with fleur de sel), but look forward to it.
The all-natural products are available from SkinnyBatches.com. You can also vote for the next flavor of Crumbies. (We picked PB&J.)
Freezer burn and ice crystals result from temperature fluctuation and too much oxygen. Most of us have found it on chicken and other meat, as well as on ice cream.
Here are some tips to reduce the amount of burned and crystallized food you need to throw away (burn isn’t harmful, it just ruins the taste and texture):
Tightly cover foods—even those in their original packaging—with freezer-weight plastic bags. Don’t rely on the flimsy bags from the produce department to protect your food. Squeeze out as much air as you can before sealing the bag.
Don’t put hot food directly into the freezer. To avoid the temperature fluctuation that causes ice crystals, let it cool to room temperature, or place it in the refrigerator to cool.
A special tip for ice cream and sorbet: Tamp a piece of plastic wrap onto the surface of the ice cream to keep it from contact with the oxygen in the container. Then cover the entire top of the container with plastic wrap and replace the lid. Even if the package is unopened, you can remove the lid and add the plastic wrap.
And finally:
Keep freezer burn off ice cream with plastic wrap. Photo courtesy Ben & Jerry’s.
Open the freezer for only seconds at a time. Don’t spend minutes with the door open, pondering your selection and letting the temperature fluctuate. If you can’t make quick decisions or don’t know what you have, keep a list of all the contents on the freezer door.
The Boston Brewing Company (maker of Samuel Adams beers) has been prolific lately, expanding the line to some 40 different beers of widely varying styles.
While each beer is special in its own way, the variety we find most special is Samuel Adams Wee Heavy, a Scotch ale-style beer. It’s part of the company’s Imperial Collection: beers with big robust taste and complex flavors. The collection also includes Double Bock, Imperial Stout and Imperial White–this is our kind of beer.
Scotch ales, nicknamed Wee Heavy, are strong ales. Samuel Adams’ Wee Heavy is inspired by both traditional Scotch ales and Scotch whiskies.
Take a sip and you’ll find notes of Scotch, thanks to the highly roasted, peat-smoked malt. Exclusive to Scotland, it’s the signature ingredient of Scotch whiskey. Other Scotch ales don’t use smoked malt in beer, so Wee Heavy has a unique aroma and flavor. Smoked malt is also used in Samuel Adams Scotch Ale.
This complex, full-bodied beer offers deep roasted flavor, earthy smokiness and intense malt flavors.
The company says that the flavors will develop with age, but we haven’t been able to store any bottles: They get consumed in short order.
Check out the different types of beers in our Beer Glossary.
