Valentine Treats

These delicious chocolate butter cookies are a wonderful treat to have on hand for all of your Valentine sweethearts. They're filled with strawberry or raspberry jam and just melt in your mouth.

Chocolate Butter Cookie Sandwich Hearts
(makes 24 single cookies or 12 sandwich cookies)

1 cup of butter (2 sticks), softened to room temperature
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
Strawberry jam
Raspberry jam
White chocolate chips
Chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and mix until blended. Sift flour and cocoa into a large bowl. Combine with the butter mixture until dough holds together in a ball. Wrap in plastic and chill dough for 30 minutes. Portion out chilled dough and roll until it is ¼ inch thick. Dip heart shaped cookie cutter in powdered sugar and cut out 12 hearts. Roll out additional dough and cut 12 additional hearts. Using a smaller heart shaped cutter, cut a small heart in the center of the second batch of cookies. Bake all cookies in a 325 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool on cooling rack to 10 minutes. Once cookies are cool enough to handle, spread you choice of strawberry or raspberry jam on the full cookies making sure not to go over the edge. Top with center cut cookies. Melt white and chocolate candy melts (separately) and drizzle over sandwich cookies.


My daughter and I made these cupcakes last year. They're just plain, ordinary strawberry flavored cupcakes topped with strawberry frosting. What made them special were the roses we created and placed on top of each little cupcake. The roses are made with fruit roll-ups. These are those lovely and delicious fruity rolls that come in all flavors. Ours were, you guessed it, strawberry. It's very simple really. All you have to do is unroll the fruit roll and starting at one end, start re-rolling and crimping in the shape of a rose. Heres a close-up:
They're super easy and a lot of fun to make. I hope you try it with your kids.

Well, Brian, my daughter's boyfriend, was not going to be left out of my daughter's and mine baking adventures. He wanted to do something he had never done before...bake a cake. Actually, his idea was to make a giant cupcake for my daughter to prove to her that he was willing to learn something new. BUT, he wanted to make a giant cupcake in a bucket! You can imagine how well that went over. My daughter went out and bought him an early Valentine's Day gift, a giant cupcake mold.
You can see how proud he was with his first baking experience. My daughter just gushed at his adventurous efforts.




They decided to name this left over piece of cake Mr. Angry Cake. They kept looking at it and decided it had a face to it, an angry face. So to keep Mr. Angry Cake from being angry, we ate him!!

Was the kitchen a mess? Yes it was. But, you know, I'd rather have a mess in the kitchen and hear them laughing than wondering where they are and if they're OK.

I wonder what we'll make next?
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I've gotten a couple of inquiries about the giant cupcake mold. Here's a picture of it.



Amazon: Giant Cupcake Mold Here's where you can find it, or just type in giant cupcake mold in your search line and it will give you some link options.