Seasons > Valentine’s Day > Ways to celebrate valentine’s day with the family>Special foods for Valentine’s Day
Seasons > Valentine’s Day > Ways to celebrate valentine’s day with the family> Special foods for Valentine’s Day
Make a giant cookie to send the message--”I love you Big Time!!”
Cookie and Candy “Bouquet”
Make or buy cookies that have a hole in the middle. Push them onto a skewer with gummy candy or gumdrops above and below the cookie to hold it in place. Tape foil wrapped chocolate hearts to some skewers, too. Heart shaped gummy candy can make more flowers--just “glue” them onto cookies, or clear plastic (such as the lid of a potato chip can, or margarine tub.) The “glue” is icing, of course! Make red flowers by “gluing” red m’n’m’s to some of the flower cookies. If you just stick the skewers into the cup, they will all flop over because they are top heavy. So poke them into an apple or potato to make each one stay where you want it, and drop that into a cup or box to make it look pretty. If you can’t bring yourself to waste a vegetable, poke it into oasis--it needs to be a tight fit in the container, or it will tip over since it is so light.
Heart Shaped Chocolate Box
These look pretty amazing, and they are not very hard to make--just melt chocolate and pour it into the mold, let it cool and pop it out. The lid portion can also be used as a cake topper, and smaller box lids can decorate cupcakes. When buying a mold, a solid lid is much easier to pop out of the mold than one that has narrow sides. Some craft stores sell molds as well as web venders such as Sugarcraft, which has a large selection of heart box molds, valentine lollipops, and a huge selection of any kind of chocolate molds you could imagine.
Link to Sugarcraft:
Heart Shaped Cake
You don’t have to have a heart shaped pan to make a heart shaped cake. Just make one round layer and one square layer. Cut the round cake in half and put it on two sides of the square cake to form a heart. For an incredible topping, make ganache (heat 2/3 cup heavy cream, turn off the heat and mix in 2/3 cup chopped chocolate until it melts. Pour over top of the cake.) Honestly, we could not stop eating it!! You will need a large platter, or cover a piece of cardboard with tinfoil to put the cake on. If you prefer the cake to be red, top with cherry pie filling or make a thick strawberry sauce with frozen strawberries, sugar, and corn starch.
Heart Shaped Cupcakes
Line cupcake tins with cupcake liners and fill with cupcake batter, as usual. Then put one marble between each cup and the paper cupcake liner and bake as usual (the marbles should not be in contact with the cake batter.) This forms the indentation or “v” shape at the top of the heart. Once the cupcakes have cooled, remove the marbles. When you ice them, they look just like hearts!
Eclair Hearts
Cut the ends off of two eclairs diagonally, and assemble them as a heart. Cut a strawberry in half and put the two halves next to each other, cut side down, to form a red heart on top of the eclair heart. The strawberry will look a bit more like a heart of you trim the sides that are next to each other in the middle.
Heart Shaped Jello
You can buy heart shaped molds, or just make the jello with half the water called for, and cut the stiffer jello (called “jigglers”) with a heart shaped cookie cutter. I find it easier to scrape strips of jello out of the pan with a thin spatula, then cut it with the cookie cutters once it is out of the pan. Otherwise, the jello tears or stretches out of shape.
In Japan, they sell heart shaped konyaku jello--just squeeze it out of the containers onto a plate for bite sized heart shaped jello.
Heart shaped cookie cutters can be used for a lot more things than cookies. Here they were used to cut bread, ham and cheese for the sandwich, red peppers and tomatoes, ham, and cheese for the salad, jello and marshmallows, and as a mold for potato salad.
Cookie cutters can also be used to cut biscuits--these are the kind you get out of a cardboard tube in the dairy section of the grocery store. The chicken and jam are a bit more subtle--hearts shaped by hand. You can add more red with foiled covered chocolate hearts and napkins.
The rice was shaped by using a cookie cutter as a mold. The pepper, grapes, and napkin add red to the meal.
Truffles
These unbelievable chocolates are so easy to make--the are made the same way as the ganache. Just heat a cup of heavy cream. Turn off the heat and stir in a cup of chopped chocolate until it melts. (Ghirardelli chocolate chips work great, but, oddly, Nestle’s does not--neither the semi sweet nor milk chocolate chips would hold their form even with twice the chocolate.) Line a small square pan with wax paper and pour the chocolate in and put in the refrigerator to cool. Then it cut into squares. I like it this way best, but you can form them into balls, then roll the balls in cocoa, powdered sugar, or nuts. Keep them in the refrigerator until they are eaten. I guarantee they do not last long once everyone has tasted one!
Chocolate Fondue
Believe it or not, chocolate fondue is the same as ganache and truffles. Just heat some cream, and melt an equal amount of chocolate into it. You don’t even have to have a fancy fondue pot with a candle under it--it all gets eaten up long before it has a chance to harden. Some of the things we like to dip in the chocolate--cake cubes, cookies, nuts, banana chunks, strawberries, orange slices, marshmallows, dried apricots, etc. If any chocolate were ever to be left over, it could be formed into truffles. If you want to be healthy, you can make it with milk instead of cream--just be sure to use milk chocolate, as the dark chocolate flavor is just too strong (it seems to be o.k. with cream for some reason.)
The best way to make your cupcakes say, “Wow!” is a cupcake stand. They come in a variety of styles and prices. Cardboard ones only cost about $5.
Turn ordinary cupcakes into extraordinary ones by standing candy hearts on top--it’s that easy. These are the pre-made icing designs that come on a sheet that are sold along with birthday candles in most grocery stores.
Other kinds of candy hearts work just as well. Sprinkles come in so many shapes, now, that you can have lot of variety. To make cute little bows, buy red “Fruit by the Foot.” Cut off 3 short strips and form into bows--make one into a loop to form the bow, make a smaller loop for the knot in the middle, then notch the 2 ends that hang down.
Another way to have a stand-up style decoration is to buy paper picks. Or you can make your own by sticking two symmetrical heart stickers onto 2 sides of a toothpick. Cuffs are cute ways to dress up cupcakes, too, but most are over priced, in my opinion. These were sold together in packs of 6 in the Target dollar section.
Strawberry Garnish
Strawberry hearts can dress up just about any dessert for Valentine’s Day! You can make each strawberry half into a heart by cutting a “v” shaped notch into the top end. Line them up in a row, or put them in a circle to form a flower. These can garnish individual slices of cake, cheesecake, or tarts. To make quick strawberry tarts, top crispy cookies with pudding and strawberries slices.
Store-bought cookie dough can be hard to manage once it comes to room temperature. To combat this, quickly slice the dough, and put it on the cookie sheet, then put the cookie sheet back in the refrigerator to cool. When you take the cookie sheet back out, press the heart cutter into each circle of dough, and scrape away the excess dough before removing the cutter. If you try to move the heart shaped cookie when it is warm, it will stretch out of shape, or tear. This way you don’t have to move the cookie once it is cut. If you have the time to make the dough from scratch, home made dough is way easier to work with, and tastes so much better!
To make two-toned cookies, add food color to some of the cookie dough, then roll out and cut the hearts shapes. Use a smaller cutter to cut out smaller hearts from the middle, then swap middles of two different colors.
Cut out two hearts, and cut a smaller heart “window” in one of them. Put a bit of jam on the solid heart, then put the cookie with the “window” on top, and press together with a fork. An easier option is to cut roll out the dough a little thicker, and press your thumbs into the middle to form a heart indentation. Fill with jam and bake.
Use stencils to add decorations to the cookies by sprinkling with colored sugar before baking them. These were sold in the dollar section of Target.
