Patent leather bunnies, rock ‘n’ roll eggs.
Photo courtesy Maggie Louise.

While we know a couple of investment bankers who became chocolatiers, Maggie Louise is the first Harvard lawyer we’ve encountered.

After a career in corporate law, she trained at Le Cordon Bleu, where she developed the concept for an elegant line of chocolates. She launched Maggie Louise Confections in the Fall of 2013, with a line of modern, chic chocolates that combine art with sophisticated flavors.

Based in Austin, Texas, the entrepreneur puts a hip and fashionable spin on fine Easter chocolate. Taking inspiration from the tunes at Austin’s South By Southwest musical festival, she created a limited edition Rock ‘n’ Roll Easter assortment:

As a mom, Maggie Louise also has the young ‘uns in mind, with chocolate dinosaurs and robots. For the ladies, there are chocolate charm bracelets and pearls. For everyone, there’s a nifty chocolate fried egg and lizard-patterned s’mores.

We look forward to working our way through the collection, piece by piece.
 
The Best Packaging

We receive many boxes of fine chocolate, but none is more beautifully wrapped than Maggie Louise’s.

The packaging is very fine and impressive. The chocolate boxes are grand enough to hold good jewelry. Even the tissue paper is a keeper. It’s a great line for gifting.

If you like fine chocolate, you’ll love perusing the Maggie Louise Confections website. Law’s loss is chocolate’s gain.

Do you buy more coffee outside the home because you can’t brew a better cup of coffee? Consider this checklist to improving your home efforts:

1. Start with a clean carafe. Coffee has oil that builds up in the carafe. You can’t see it, but it will become rancid, adding unpleasant flavor notes to the brewed coffee. Similarly, if you live in a hard water area and use tap water to brew, you need to remove the with calcium deposits. While most people rinse out the pot before each use, after every few uses you should wash the glass carafe with white vinegar and water, using a scrubbing brush. Just swishing water around doesn’t do the job. Once a month, run a vinegar-water solution through the entire apparatus, per manufacturer’s instructions.

2. Grind your own beans. It’s less convenient, but coffee beans begin to lose flavor and aroma immediately after grinding. Within two hours, we can taste the difference! It’s better to buy whole beans and grind them immediately prior to brewing.

3. Use the correct grind. Drip machines require a medium grind, espresso machines use a fine grind and French press and drips systems require a coarse grind. If the grind isn’t right for the brewing technique, you won’t get enough extraction from the beans.

4. Don’t use boiling water. Contrary to what most of us have been taught, the temperature of the water should be 200°F, not 212°F. While it doesn’t seem that significant, the extra twelve degrees of heat extract more bitterness and acid from the beans. Good electric coffee makers accommodate for this. If you’re boiling water to pour over ground beans, use a thermometer. You can use any thermometer that measures 200°; Taylor makes a special thermometer for coffee and tea.

6. Don’t store coffee in the freezer or fridge. Beans are porous and easily absorb moisture, odors and flavors. Keep the beans, whole or ground, at room temperature in an airtight container. We use the Friis Coffee Vault, an airtight stainless steel canister specially designed to vent carbon dioxide gas that continuously emits from the beans as a result of the roasting process.
 
WHAT IF YOU HAVE TOO MUCH COFFEE?

[2] Curry power. Here’s a recipe if you want to make it yourself (photo © Savory Spice Shop | Facebook).

[3] Curried egg salad on whole wheat (photo © Taste Of Home).

And we did it the easy way, purchasing pre-cooked and peeled hard boiled eggs from Trader Joe’s.

While we were at it, we picked up some pre-grilled chicken breasts across the aisle, and made a batch of curried chicken salad as well. We did some blending, and decided that we preferred egg salad and chicken salad separately, rather than combined.

A different on a traditional favorite, this curried egg salad is fresh and invigorating. The recipe is by Louise Mellor for SafeEggs.com.

Find more delicious egg recipes at SafeEggs.com.

National Egg Salad week begins the day after Easter, a logical time to begin using up all those colored eggs!

> The history of egg salad.

> The history of curry powder.

> The different types of eggs: a photo glossary.

> The year’s 10 egg holidays.

> The year’s 27+ sandwich holidays.

> The year’s 40+ salad holidays.

> Below: myths about using eggs.
 
 
RECIPE: CURRIED EGG SALAD

Ingredients For 4 Servings

 
Plus

 
Preparation

1. CUT hard boiled eggs into small dice.

2. COMBINE the eggs with the remaining ingredients in a small bowl and stir well to combine.

3. FOLD in the arugula and serve the salad atop the bread, green salad, or with crackers.
 

Davidson’s Safest Eggs are whole raw eggs that have been pasteurized in the shell, using special equipment. Pasteurization kills the salmonella, as does cooking unpasteurized eggs.

We go out of our way to find Davidson’s Safest Eggs when we’re making Caesar salad, mousse, steak tartare and other recipes that require raw eggs that are not cooked—not to mention making raw cake batter and cookie dough safe enough to enjoy.

Many people believe different myths about egg safety. Here, Davidson’s puts them to rest:

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.