Conversation Heart Cookies

I've needed a reason to bake lately and have been rather void of any creative ideas for fun baking projects.  When it came to signing up for a treat for my daughter's pre-school class, I would have picked cupcakes, but that was already taken, so I went for cookies.  I instantly knew what I wanted to make when I saw their classroom door. We wouldn't just make heart-shaped cookies, but conversation heart cookies.

Here was my inspiration:

We made our sugar cookie dough a day ahead to refrigerate and let it come to room temperature before rolling out.  We made some royal icing and picked lavender, yellow, orange, pink and green to frost our cookies.

They looked really pretty just like this, but we I simply had to make them conversation hearts.

  It's been done several times before so there was plenty cookies ideas to review out there.  There were lots of fun little sayings you can put on the cookies and we did a few, but primarily used their names for each cookie.  We made all sizes of hearts and used the smaller ones for the kids and the larger ones for the teachers. We did take a few shortcuts in making these, but they turned out just fine (especially for 2-year-olds). We did not line the edges when frosting the cookies. We also did not use the royal icing for piping the names. I had a red gel handy and decided to use that.  It was a little gooey to work with and hard to write with the tube, but it worked.

I bet the girls will be thrilled to give these to all their friends at their Valentine's Day party tomorrow!

Valentine Cupcakes

I found some Valentine cupcake papers adorned hearts in my baking supplies and thought I would make some chocolate cupcakes for a Valentine's Day treat. I originally intended to make red velvet cupcakes and now know that I need to get gel food coloring as the liquid food coloring just doesn't go as far. And, while red velvet cupcakes are very pretty, I don't particularly like the idea of loading the cupcakes with food coloring. So, instead I just made chocolate cupcakes. I do always use cake flour to make cakes and cupcakes. If you haven't used it before, it's a much more fine flour that makes a more delicate cake. I decided to make cream cheese frosting as I had some extra cream cheese to use. I didn't pipe the frosting as cream cheese frosting doesn't stay put as nicely as butter cream, but used my new small offset spatula to frost them and topped them with some red sugar sprinkles. I ended up making a few dozen of these tasty treats so my husband had some happy colleagues at work the day after Valentine's Day!

Chocolate Truffles

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Valentine's day is approaching and I had mentioned I was in the mood to make chocolates. I was pushed over the edge with recent visits to a few chocolate shops and wanted to try my hand at making truffles again as it's been a few years since I've made them. They are pretty easy to make and only take a few ingredients. You start with chocolate and mix in hot heavy cream to make it creamy and more pliable to make the round truffles. The key is to melt down the chocolate appropriately so it's completely melted. Then, you pour it into the container (I had a purpose for the heart shaped pie plate my dad got me as a gift) and scoop it out to harden a bit more in the refrigerator. Then, you can roll them in cocoa and make the round truffles. They may not look perfect, but they taste perfect and are so smooth and rich. Pure indulgence! I packaged them in small boxes for a few special people. Happy Valentine's Day!

Chocolate Ganache Tart

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If you receive Martha Stewart Living or have seen it on newstands, you may notice this tart on the cover of the February issue. This chocolate tart has a buttery chocolate crust and a creamy ganache filling. It is to die for if you love chocolate and my sister, her husband and I all agreed it was one of the best desserts we have had in a while. It is rich, but has a smooth texture and great flavor. The Martha recipe was for individual tarts, but we made one large tart in a regular round tart tin. The crust had to be kneaded a bit after refrigerating, but was easy to roll out and transfer to the tin. One tip is to roll out the dough on cocoa instead of flour so as to not discolor the crust. The filling was easy to make and it's highly recommended to use good chocolate. We used 65% cocoa bittersweet chocolate and along with the heavy cream and whole milk, it was a dreamy filling. We waited until all the kids were in bed and then enjoyed it topped with whipped cream and a meringue heart. It would also be great with strawberries or raspberries on the side. To drink? A glass of smooth red wine!

Meringue Hearts

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I've made meringue to top a lemon pie, but have never made baked meringues. These meringue hearts were made as a decoration to top our chocolate tart (see next post), but were a sweet treat on their own and turned out very pretty. They are quite easy to make and only take three ingredients - egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar. The time is in piping and baking them. They need to bake at a very low temperature for a few hours and then stay in the oven overnight. So, you won't want to make them if you have a lot of other baking to follow. I made them a day in advance of the tart as they keep well. You have to make sure to whip the meringue to stiff peaks (a mixer is essential) and I separated the meringue into three bowls to make white, pink and red hearts. The prettiest ones where when the colors were mixed a little when I switched colors while piping. They are such a sweet Valentine decoration and looked so nice on top of the chocolate tart.