Your no-bake dessert recipe for the day: Frozen chocolate zabaglione

 
Today's no-bake dessert recipe from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen: Frozen chocolate zabaglione. If you try any of the recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen, we want to see the finished dish so we can showcase it on the blog and in print. You can upload your photos to this gallery.

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-- Rene Lynch
Twitter.com / renelynch

Photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

It's National Macaro(o)n Day: Where to get some

Whether you spell the dainty French buttercream-, jam- or ganache-filled colorful sandwich cookies with one ‘o’ or two, today is National Macaro(o)n Day. And you don’t have to drop everything and hop across the pond to enjoy these treats at famous Parisian maisons like Ladurée or Pierre Hermé. Angelenos are in luck as there are plenty of macaron masters scattered throughout this city, offering a delectable collection of confections from the color –- and flavor -– spectrum, on its dedicated holiday … or whenever:

Jin Patisserie: Tahitian vanilla, yuzu and chocolate mint are a sampling of the distinct macaron flavors created by Kristy Choo at her Abbot Kinney storefront. 1202 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 399-8801, jinpatisserie.com.

Lette Macarons: Macaron enthusiast Paulette Koumetz and pastry chef Christophe Michalak offer what they describe as a kaleidoscopic selection of macarons at their Beverly Hills shop: Earl Grey tea, Sicilian pistachio, Colombian coffee. 9466 Charleville Blvd. at Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 275-0023, lettemacarons.com.

Hotcakes Bakes: A Parisian native, owner Elfie Weiss studied cuisson at prominent bakeries Gerard Mulot and Ladurée. Try the coconut, strawberry or S'more. 4119 S. Centinela Ave., Los Angeles, (310) 397-2324, hotcakesbakes.com.

XT Patisserie: Pastry chef Xuan Ngo was born in Vietnam but grew up in France, baking his way to Los Angeles, where he perfected the macaron at Boule in Beverly Hills. Flavors like hazelnut, orange blossom and passion fruit are available online and at the South Pasadena and Larchmont farmers markets through Sugarbird Sweets. Xtpatisserie.com.

Bottega Louie: The long glass dessert case at the entrance of the establishment boasts an array of elegantly decorated pastries including beautiful, brightly colored macarons like the mandarin, cassis and salted caramel. 700 S. Grand Ave. L.A., (213) 802-1470; bottegalouie.com.

Little Next Door: The artisan marketplace features a boulangerie, and the Parisian-like ambiance is perfect for enjoying a macaron, or two. Cookie creations include dulce de leche, chocolate and raspberry. 8164 W. 3rd St., L.A., (323) 951-0487, thelittledoor.com.

La Provence: With locations in Brentwood and Beverly Hills, the café produces more than 10 flavors such as lavender, rose and pumpkin spice, to name a few. 8950 W. Olympic Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 888-8833, laprovencecafe.com.

--Caitlin Keller

Photo: Macarons. Credit: Bernhard Winkelmann

Counting down to Easter with our favorite Easter candy: The classic hollow bunny

Happy Easter everyone!

We've counted down to Easter by celebrating some of our favorite Easter candies. What are your favorite Easter candies? On this, we can all agree: It just wouldn't be Easter without finding the classic hollow chocolate bunny in your Easter basket this morning. (Dontcha just want to bite his ear off?) And if you have one, there's a good chance it comes from R.M. Palmer Co.:

Price: $.99 to $11.99, depending on size

Where you can buy it: CVS, Amazon, 99 Cent Store, Ralphs, Stater Bros. and many other stores

Claim to fame: The hollow chocolate color Easter bunny with colorful packaging. The company is famous for giving its bunnies “Palmer Personalities” such as "Baby Binks," "Timid Timmy," "Flopsy" and "Wooly Willy.” One personality, “Da Bunny” comes with a yellow bling chain with a large “D.”

How it has changed over the years: There's a new basket bunny, a hollow mold made with a "Double Crisp confection," foiled in one of 3 color foils and packed into a themed window box. And there are now Easter "buddies," such as a bunny paired with a duck and a chick, also packed in themed window box.

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Caption: The Palmer “Sunny” hollow milk chocolate Easter bunny. (Kolin Toney / Flickr)

Counting down to Easter with some of our favorite Easter candy: Peeps

 
You know it's Easter when the Peeps arrive and take over the supermarket shelves.

We're counting down to Easter by celebrating some of our favorite Easter candies. What are your favorites? What did we miss? So far, we've covered the Whitman's Sampler, Cadbury Creme Eggs, See's chocolates and Godiva chocolates. You can read them all here. But nothing says Easter quite like a marshmallow chick.

Price: $1.99 for 10 peeps

Where you can buy it: Grocery stores, drugstores

Claim to fame: Peeps, most popular around Easter, have a reputation for being indestructible.

Pedigree: Peeps were born in 1953, tediously made by hand in a process that took 27 hours to create a single marshmallow. In 1954, the company mechanized the process and it now takes six minutes to make one Peep. Starting with orange pumpkin-shaped Peeps for Halloween in 1958, the company soon began making shapes other than the familiar chick, so we can get our fix year-round: ghosts and cats for Halloween, hearts and teddy bears for Valentine’s Day and snowmen and trees for Christmas. Sugar-free marshmallows debuted in 2007 and the newest Peeps are dipped or covered in chocolate.

Fan favorite: According to the latest survey, the chick still holds the No. 1 bestseller spot, though it has at times been closely challenged by the bunny. Yellow is the bestselling color.

Sales figures or production figures over the last five years: The privately owned company produces over 2 billion Peeps a year -– enough to circle the Earth twice. Eight hundred million of those are for Easter alone.

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--Kelsey Ramos

Photo: Kelsey Ramos

Counting down to Easter with some of our favorite Easter candy: See's chocolates

We're counting down to Easter with some of our favorite Easter candy. We've already used this as an excuse to gobble up and "research" Cadbury Creme Eggs, Whitman's Sampler and Godiva chocolates. (Click here to read where we are in the countdown.)

Today, we take a look at a homegrown favorite: See's chocolates, including the signature rocky road chocolate Easter eggs, which are hand-decorated at the See's operation on La Cienega Boulevard.

Price: Varies, but includes $6 for a bag of milk chocolate foil eggs,  $39.80 for an extra fancy assortment, $11.05 for a rocky road Easter Egg, shown here, and $5.60 for my favorite (in case you were wondering): Scotchmallow eggs.

Where can you buy them: Available online and in shopping centers such as South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa or Westfield Shopping Center in Culver City.

Claim to fame: See's Candies is celebrating its 95th anniversary, and was the training ground for Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance for the famous "I Love Lucy" conveyor-belt scene. Come Easter, the La Cienega operation looks like a sweet, sugary garden as employees hand-decorate each Easter egg candy. It is a busy time because each egg must be made at the very last minute. "We don't use preservatives," explained spokesman Richard Van Doren. "These are not meant to be sitting around on a shelf." In all, See's will probably produce about 5 million chocolate eggs this season.

How have things changed: "Actually, our existing line hasn't changed all that much. It's been around a long time, so certain items become a tradition for families."

Is it us, or has Easter candy exploded this year? Van Doren says it's not our imagination. Easter is late this year -- coming at the end of April. And the last big "candy" holiday was Feb. 14. Purveyors are taking advantage of that big gap to roll out items that well enjoy a longer display period. And consumers are gobbling it up, he says. "Due to the separation of Valentine's Day and Easter, that's a big gap to go without some sort of fun holiday. There's an impulse to pick up one of the decorated eggs, or something else."

How does Easter rank in terms of sales? "Easter is our second-largest holiday, after Christmas. Valentine's Day is No. 3."

Who buys more chocolate? Men or women? "70% of our customers are female, until you get to Valentine's day. Men procrastinate and then line up on the 14th, or else they'll go home and get in trouble."

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-- Rene Lynch
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Photo credit: See's Candies

Counting down to Easter with some of our favorite Easter candy: Godiva chocolates

We're counting down to Easter with a look at some of our favorite Easter candies. What's your favorite? Earlier this week, we caught up with Whitman's Sampler and the Cadbury Creme Egg. Now we go upscale with Godiva Chocolatier.

Here are prices for some of their Easter highlights: the Easter Carrot (4 ounces of milk-chocolate pearls coated in orange-colored candy held in a carrot-shaped bag): $8. Spring Gems (32 pieces of white-, dark- and milk-chocolate truffles in cellophane): $18. Bertie (he 9-ounce traditional hollow milk-chocolate bunny that is the foundation of many Easter baskets): $23.50. A keepsake Beaded Egg, shown here, containing 12 pieces of milk- and dark-chocolate foil-wrapped eggs: $25. And then there's the Easter Luxury Basket, which includes more than 2 pounds of most of the candies listed above and a few other delights, $110.

Where these are available: all over the world. Godiva chocolates are available online at Godiva.com and at the company's stores, generally in high-end malls such as the Glendale Galleria, the Beverly Center and Westfield, Century City. This year, Godiva has teamed up with Target, where the company’s limited-edition 1.4-ounce milk-chocolate Easter bunny will be sold until April 24.

Claim to fame: Godiva is best known for its truffles. The company, named for Lady Godiva -- whose legend involves nudity, a horse and long hair (but not chocolate, as far as we know) -- was founded in 1926 in Belgium. The first U. S. Godiva boutique opened on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1972 and helped set off the craze for high-end chocolate -- an affordable luxury for most.

History: Godiva, purchased by Campbell’s Soup Co. in 1967, was sold in 2007 to the Turkish company Yildiz Holding. At the time, Godiva sales were about $500 million. The company does not release sales figures.

Bestsellers: The company says its Bertie Chocolate Bunny and Beaded Egg are “always popular items” during the Easter candy season.

-- Robin Abcarian

Photo: Godiva

Counting down to Easter with our favorite Easter candy: Cadbury Creme Eggs

Easter symbolizes many things. Rebirth. The arrival of spring.

And candy.

We're using the arrival of Easter Sunday as an excuse to celebrate our favorite spring and Easter candies. What are your favorite Easter candies? Monday, we caught up with the Whitman's Sampler. Today: The Cadbury Creme Egg

Price: About $1

Where you can buy it: Supermarkets, convenience stores and big box stores

Claim to fame: First sold 40 years ago, Cadbury Creme Eggs are now one of the British chocolate company's most popular candies despite being sold only a few months out of the year.

If you associate these egg-shaped chocolates with clucking bunnies, you're probably not crazy. In 1982, Cadbury launched its "Clucking Bunny" campaign to advertise its fondant-filled eggs.

What's changed over the years: In the U.S., they've gotten smaller. This didn't escape the attention of "The Office" actor B.J. Novak, who drew attention to this candy reduction during a 2007 appearance on "Late Night With Conan O’Brien." He brought an egg of yesteryear and a present-day egg for a side-by-side comparison. The egg of today was noticeably smaller. Today, Cadbury Creme Eggs in the U.S. are five grams less than their British counterparts (34 grams versus 39 grams).

Fan favorite: Cadbury Creme Eggs are its staple product, but variations include the Caramel Egg, Treasure Eggs (hollow chocolate eggs with treats in the middle) and Eggheads (hollow chocolate eggs decorated with a festive wrapper).

Sales figures or production figures over the last five years: Cadbury Creme Eggs are sold only about four months out of the year, but annual sales exceed $300 million globally. In the U.K., they are the bestselling confectionary from New Year's to Easter. (Cadbury was recently purchased by Kraft Foods in a deal that creates the world's biggest chocolate company.)

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Photo: Cadbury

Counting down to Easter with our favorite Easter candy: Whitman's Sampler

 
Easter symbolizes many things. Rebirth. The arrival of spring.

And candy.

We're using the arrival of Easter Sunday as an excuse to gobble up -- I mean, research -- some of our favorite candies, the ones that just sing spring and Easter. First up: The 12-ounce Whitman's Sampler assorted chocolates (with special Easter wrapping). 

Price:  $9.99
 
Where you can buy it:  CVS drug stores, for one, or www.russellstover.com
 
Claim to fame: The Whitman's Sampler, a favorite of drug stores everywhere, with the easy-to-spot cross-stiched designs on the box lid … just like … a … sampler.
 
How has it changed?: Whitman's Chocolates opened its doors in 1842 in Philadelphia, and its first box of packed chocolates appeared in 1854. Seemingly, someone -- maybe Mr. Whitman himself -- anticipated America’s love affair with chocolate and sugar and packaging. The company prospered for decades, adding such new-fangled trappings as cellophane overwrap and advertising in publications such as the Saturday Evening Post. The first Sampler appeared in 1912. (Do we feel a centennial Sampler coming on?) During World War I, chocolates were packaged with "vest-pocket" editions of "classics by well-known authors" and sent to troops overseas. During World War II, the company reportedly received special allotments of tin to send 6 million pounds of candy to servicemen. Even the Smithsonian has Whitman’s artifacts.
 
Sales figures: Whitman's was acquired by Kansas City, Mo.-based Russell Stover in 1993. One source listed (2007) sales at the family-held company at $575 million.
 
But what does it taste like?: We'd like to quote a Village Voice blog that recently evaluated Valentine candy (samplers) under the Whitman's and Russell Stover labels (Whitman's was the winner): "The overall selection is better with more distinguishable fillings as opposed to that general sweet corn syrup flavor that marks the Russell Stover choices. The English-style toffee chocolates were pretty good, plus the signature branded chocolate was a nice touch.... At the end of the day, though, they both still taste like $5 chocolates chock full of artificial flavorings."

The bottom line: Four pieces will cost you about 230 calories.

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Photo: Whitman's Chocolates

Carving a message into chocolate

 

I got a phone call Friday from Zach Crantz, telling me I'd been sent a chocolate news release announcing that Magnum ice cream -- a popular brand of bars in Europe -- is coming to U.S. markets in April.

"OK, thanks, I'll look for it," I said.

I could hardly have missed it. Crantz was serious. A chocolate news release.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Breaking news: Marijuana gives you the munchies

 
Our neighbors to the north have concluded that marijuana makes you hungry and gives you the munchies. The study out of the University of Alberta found that small doses of marijuana's active ingredient, THC, boost the appetite of terminal cancer patients.

Now, there's nothing funny about cancer. But there is something funny about the need to study this, am I right?

Researcher Wendy Wismer gets the joke. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence concerning marijuana's effect on the desire for food, a.k.a. the munchies, she said. But she defended her pilot study as being the first to be conducted under rigorous, double-blind scientific controls.

In other Canadian research news, drinking alcohol can be good for you. You might even call it "healthy": Two studies from the University of Calgary have concluded that moderate alcohol consumption can cut the risk of death from heart disease and stroke by up to 25% compared with people who don't drink at all. Apparently, the alcohol helps increase levels of "good" cholesterol, which in turn helps reduce heart disease.

We're going to reserve judgment on all these studies -- we will leave that to our brainiac colleagues who run our Health section.

But we will leave you with this recipe for midnight chocolate brownie bites from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen. 

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-- Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Photo: Robert Lachman / Los Angeles TImes