Of all the trompe l'oeil (French for "trick the eye") cupcakes we've seen on Slashfood - toasted ravioli cupcake, ice cream cone cupcakes, caramel apple cupcakes - these mini-burgers, or "sliders," may just be my favorite. The buns are vanilla cupcakes, the burgers are bits of chocolate cupcake, lettuce is shredded coconut, and ketchup and mustard are red and yellow icing.

These come from Smiley's Sweets and Creations, via Tastespotting. I'm thinking these definately have a place on my upcoming March Madness menu...

Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!

In last night's episode of Top Chef, teams created dishes to serve at a block party in a Chicago neighborhood. First things first: This was one intense block party. We're talking moon bounce and dunk tanks. In fact, now that I think about it, the food didn't even look like the best thing there.

Okay.

So this is the Super Bowl. You don't need to spend all those unearned bets on Wagyu or Kobe or whatever fancy beef for burgers, and you definitely don't have to go and make full-size burgers, either. First of all, a full-size burger suffers the same syndrome as Buffalo wings. They are messy, and if you and your guests eat burgers the way me and my guests eat burgers -- rare -- they'll be dripping bloody greasy juice everywhere. Secondly, with all that food being served all afternoon (or evening), a small taste of a great burger in the form of a slider is better than trying to force down an entire burger. It lets people taste everything else on the table.

Every year for the last 16, the White Castle restaurant chain has run a contest in which they ask people to create a recipe that uses 10 White Castle hamburgers. Leslye Lewis, this year's winner was crowned on Monday and won the top honors for her creation that she calls, "The Latkes You Crave."

The recipe takes the hamburger patties off the buns and crumbles them into a batter of potato, onion, flour, eggs and seasonings. They are then cooked in vegetable oil and served warm with traditional latke sides (applesauce and sour cream). If you want to make your own White Castle latkes you are in luck, as the recipe is after the jump.

Other finalist dishes (all made out of White Castle sliders) included dim sum, a White Castle Ruben Bake, a Seven-Layer Burger and a White Casterole Breakfast Bake.

It's five-for-one day here at Slashfood. Just kidding, who could possibly eat only one slider, much less make a meal of it. Hence today's headline. These specimens come from Powers Hamburgers in Fort Wayne, Ind. Powers is that town's answer to White Castle, i.e. a late-night establishment for when the mood strikes. I must say they look a helluva lot better than White Castle. For one thing, they're smothered in sauteed onions. I've had Krystal burgers and they were a step above the Castle's. These greasy little wonders appear to be a on whole other level all together.

Yeah, so maybe it's a little early in the day for burger porn, but these are classy little sliders as photographed by roboppy, who writes food blog The Girl Who Ate Everything. The burgers are a menu item at Bouchon Bakery in New York, and are made with tomato marmalade and topped with ricotta cheese. A Hamburger Today reports that Bouchon will be adding a new slider made with Wagyu beef, oven-roasted roma tomatoes and Taleggio cheese.

You wouldn't guess it based on the posts today, but the Slashfood team really isn't totally biased in favor of the Colts in today's Super Bowl. It just happens that Joanne showed a good offense all week supporting the Bears, and Indianapolis took some time to find its foodish ground and is coming on strong in the end.

Now White Castle burgers are not really from Indianapolis. In fact, the first store was built in Wichita, Kansas, and today, the headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio. However, that doesn't seem to keep Indy-ites (Indy-ans?) from mentioning White Castle Slyders when thinking of food from home. Unfortunately for us Indy fans in California, there are no White Castle restaurants anywhere in the state. I resorted to buying the frozen burgers from the grocery store, and while I have to say that wrapping two little burgers in a paper towel and microwaving them made me frown, and the dry taste of the bun and the sad little flap of meat inside was a little disappointing, I still felt supportive.

Go Indianapolis!

I can think of at least one situation in which White Castle Slyders really hit the spot. Maybe two. Neither of those two situations are Thanksgiving, however, so I was pretty surprised to see a recipe for turkey stuffing on the White Castle website. It involves a number of slyders - their small, rectangular burgers that have five little holes in the patties and come with onions and a pickle - and some more traditional stuffing ingredients, such as celery and spices. The pickles are removed before starting the stuffing, but since onions, bread and sausage can all play a big role in stuffing, it actually doesn't seem too strange.

The recipe is after the jump, if you're brave enough to try it.

Every once in a while, I come across burgers that are served on hot dog buns. This presentation never looked appetizing to me, largely because the meat is always shaped into a "burger dog" and a roll of hamburger meat just doesn't look too tasty.  Reading the post about The Long Burger at Ideas in Food proved to me that burgers can be served on hot dog buns and still look delicious, perhaps even better than ordinary burgers. The trick is to make the burgers flat and long before grilling them, like a super-long slider. Once the burger is on the bun, you can load it up with toppings without the burger getting too tall to bite into.

If your sweetheart is a little less high-maintenance than most, or if you're just a terrific redneck or a class clown, why not try White Castle for Valentine's Day? The ultimate in low-class burger joints is taking reservations for February 14, you know, just in case the other ones are booked.

What's more, the burger joint is offering candlelit dinners in most of its outlets. Funniest of all, though, is one Indianapolis White Castle manager's quote: "In the 84 years we've been in business, you know there have got to be some love stories out there where, 'We met at White Castle,' stuff like that."

Does there really got to be? I hazard a guess that these stories are rare. You tell me. If there's someone out there whose first date with an eventual spouse was at a White Castle, sweetie, I've got to meet you.

[via Gothamist]