February 14, 2011

Valentine's Day Explosion

It looks like Valentine's Day exploded in my apartment.  I am drowning in pink and red, hearts and lots and lots of sprinkles.


The funny thing is that I'm the girl who isn't really into all that.  I don't wear pink and I don't dot my i's with little hearts.  But something changed this year.  Would you like to hear that the romantic side of me came out and wanted to express itself through baking?  Ok.  Sort of.  (Sorry hon).  A big part of my inspiration came from my fellow food bloggers.  The internet (well, the food blog internet that my browser is always on) is full of Valentine's day desserts, chocolate in every shape and form, and enough pink to dress a bubblegum army.  What can I say? It looks like so much fun, so I jumped on board.

The first thing I wanted to try was dipping things in chocolate.  Simple and easy to do, right?  Wrong.  Who knew that getting chocolate to melt to the perfect dipping consistency would be so difficult?  Apparently, as I discovered yesterday, you can't just melt the chocolate by itself and expect to be able to work with it.  Thanks to some mid-cooking research, I learned that you need to add some oil.  After a rough start, I was back in the game, dipping everything I could get my hands on and then showering them with an array of Valentine's themed sprinkles.

 I dipped Oreo's

And pretzel rods

 And mini-pretzels

I could have kept going, but I had lots more to tackle.  Such as arranging them on pretty plates and taking lots of pictures for you all to see.  




I thought they'd look cute arranged in a vase.



I even got a teddy bear.  Someone has to guard all the chocolate until my boyfriend gets here.

Next on the list was chocolate heart cookies.  I can hear the collective "awwwww".  


If you put the sprinkles on the raw cookie dough they bake right in.

Half of them got heart cut-outs


I spread pink icing, and combined to create heart sandwiches. 

I don't think it gets much more Valentiney than this!

These cookies are a whole other story.  The short version is that I bought a cookie sheet molded with Valentine themed shapes and baked sugar cookies on it.  These are the best of the lot, and my sad attempt at decorating.  Please don't ask about the rest.

I think all together, it makes a pretty good spread!

Happy Valentine's Day! 
I heart you.  You being my family, my friends, my blog followers, and of course my wonderful, incredible boyfriend.  You are my real inspiration, maybe not for baking, but definitely for life.  
XOXOXOXO



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3 comments:

  1. These are great Valentine's Day cookies and treats. The pretzels can really brighten up any table, and the presentation of the heart shaped cookies on the colorful plates is a WOW!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Those mini pretzels are so cute!! I love how you used a vase to put the chocolate dipped preztels, too! Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day <3

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  3. Pics looks fabulous!!!
    Sounds delicious!!! Can't wait to try it!!
    Thanks a lot for sharing.

    ReplyDelete