Please hop our way this Easter. Photo
courtesy Vosges Haut Chocolate.

Four exotic, solid chocolate bunnies are ready to hop your way:

• Amalfi Bunny (white chocolate, lemon zest and pink peppercorns)
• Barcelona Bunny (hickory-smoked almonds and grey sea salt)
• Orchid Vanilla Bunny (62% dark chocolate with Tahitian vanilla)
• Toffee Bunny (43% dark milk chocolate with toffee chunks and pink Himalayan salt).They’re tasty but petite—2.5 ounces each—so you don’t have to feel guilty about finishing the last bite.

  Find more information on these and our other favorite Easter chocolates.

  Read our full review of Vosges Haut-Chocolat.

It was just last year that two burger lovers in Seattle pondered how to take our beloved national dish to a new level.

Yes, there are gourmet breads and condiments and organic beef, but at the end of the day, it’s still a beef patty (and more recently, a chicken, lamb, pork or turkey patty).

One day, the two intrepid burger explorers decided to incorporate popular ingredients—cheese, other meats, veggies and herbs—into the beef. This has often been done in meat loaf recipes, but the concept tastes oh, so much different in a pure, all-natural, top-quality patty made of free-range beef from the Pacific Northwest.

The first Built Burger was created with a mixture of chorizo, roasted red bell peppers, caramelized Walla Walla onions, Worcestershire sauce and French sea salt. It was so good that people passed on the bun and toppings and ate it with a fork. It was called the Magnificent Chorizo Burger, and that’s not hyperbole.

The best burgers we’ve ever had. Photo © BuiltBurger.com.

• Discover more about these brilliantly-built burgers in the full review, and be sure to order a bunch.
• Check out our better burger tips.

Instead of a traditional sorbet presentation,
shape balls of sorbet into oval egg shapes
and serve in a “nest.” Photo courtesy Wine
Cellar Sorbets, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The
Week.

To shape the sorbet into egg shapes:

1. Use plastic gloves or put your hands into thin plastic bags from the produce section.

2. Let the “eggs” freeze hard on a tray covered with plastic wrap, until serving time.

3. Put one “egg” of each color on a plate and sprinkle with jelly beans. You can also use a meringue “nest” or create a nest of lettuce cups.

4. Serve with tiny cookies, such as Byrd’s Key Lime Coolers and Razzberry Tarts.

5. You can do the same with ice cream or frozen yogurt, but it’s harder to find three bright colors.

Find more dessert ideas in our Ice Cream & Sorbet and Desserts Sections.

Charge your cooking by taking a class in something different, and impress your friends and family with your homemade bagels (or baklava, croissants, pizza—anything).

While it’s not a challenge to buy bagels, baklava etc., imagine the thrill of hot bagels emerging from your own oven.

Bagels are one of our favorite foods—authentic Old World bagels, not the bloated specimens many have evolved into. It’s time to learn how to bake perfect ones.

We have our eye on a bagel-making course at New York’s International Culinary Center (Saturday, June 26, 2010, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., $195). At the end of class, we’ll eat the piping hot bagels—sesame, poppy seed, salt, onion and garlic—with cream cheese, lox and all the fixings.

Check out the classes at your local cooking school for something that catches your eye. Cooking classes are also a great bonding experience—with spouse, parent, child or pal.

• Find recipes for challah and Irish soda bread in our Bread Section.

Imagine making bagels at home instead of
running out for them on Sunday mornings.
Photo courtesy French Meadow Bakery, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.

You can pull a salad together in a snap if
you store cleaned greens. Photo courtesy
Equinoxe.

1. Line a plastic bag with paper towels and gently insert lettuce, spinach or other greens.

2. Seal the bag, carefully pushing out any excess air as you close it. Refrigerate the bag.

3. Alternatively, if you have room in the fridge, you can line a bowl with paper towels, insert the greens and seal with plastic wrap (or use a bowl with an airtight lid).

Clean, dry lettuce will stay fresh for several days, and often as long as a week; other greens may have more or less time. That’s why it’s best to refrigerate each type of green separately, since they’ll wilt at different rates.

However, if you have tossed salad greens that aren’t already dressed, use this technique to refrigerate the salad.

• Find more salad and vegetable ideas in our Vegetables Section.