Valentine's Day Treats

Happy Valentines Day! 

Truth be told, V-day is not something that Mountain Man and I really celebrate...we don't have big dinner plans, I definitely won't be getting flowers or a box of chocolates and I will absolutely not be getting any jewelry- MM made it very clear I'd reached my diamond quota this year ;)

Despite the fact that I'm not particularly keen on a holiday that could potentially make some people feel pretty darn sad, I'll take any excuse to make cute and delicious treats.

This Valentine's Day I decided to go back to the good old days when it didn't matter if you had a significant other to get you something sweet and I set out to put a smile on everyone's face in the office with a little something special.

One of the girls in the office can't have gluten and I wanted to make something that everyone could enjoy, so as I browsed the aisles of Michael's I picked up some candy molds, a few bags of candy melts and lollipop sticks.

These lollipops couldn't be any easier (the directions are right on the package).. just melt, pour, stick, place in the fridge and voila! homemade candies.

But I didn't stop there.. I had a ton of cake left over from some projects over of the weekend (I can't wait to show you the final products!) so cake balls seemed the perfect choice.

With all the extra lollipop sticks I thought I'd give cake pops a go...

Lets just say that didn't go as planned... I have already admitted my cake balls need work- they never look as good as they should and I can never get them smooth! And now, with cake pops...well, put it this way, I'm no Bakerella and I should have read Carolyn's tips a little more closely to get them to work.

I couldn't get the sticks to stay in the cake balls for the life of me and the silly little things just kept falling apart so a few wasted cake balls later, I gave up and just went back to making cake balls. After my epic fail I went back and researched all thing cake pops (which I should have done from the beginning) and now I know where I went wrong.. so next time those cake pops are mine!

No matter what your plans today, flowers or not, I hope everyone has a lovely day full of sweets and treats :)

Happy Baking!

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day!!

I'm not going to lie.. I've never been a huge fan of Valentines Day. That's not to say that I've ever really had a horrible v-day experience, I just don't like holidays that exclude those not in committed relationships. To be honest, I think the world- specifically all the single ladies and gents out there- would be in a much happier place come Valentine's Day if it was more like back in the day when everyone got a Valentine's Day treat despite whether or not they'd found someone to spend it with. Back in the college years we liked to call this "Black _(insert day of the week here)_" Not that we were all angry, men hating ladies.. quite the contrary.. many of us had some fine fellas here and there, not to mention all my girlfriends are extremely pretty :) ..we just liked to pretend we were man haters and use V-Day as an excuse to have a little girly fun for those of us without significant others at the time.

Who wouldn't want to spend time with these lovely ladies??

But Oh! How the times have changed!! Now that I'm all grown up ;) I've got myself a fine little honey to call my own! Unfortunately he's not in Texas with me at the moment, but we're working on that... so I thought I would send him a little cake love to get him through our time apart... he loves when I send him treats. Just thought I'd share my creations with you.

Me and Dustin playing around at my Aunt and Uncles in the country..

Since I had to make a cake for my class on Friday, I figured I would use it two-fold and use the second layer for some sweets for my sweet. I remembered that my mom had sent me some Valentine's Day cookie cutters last year and finally put them to good use... So after letting the cake cool and all that jazz, I used the heart shaped cookie cutters and ended up with about 6 hearts out of the 8 inch round cake. I then sliced each heart in half and filled them with pink buttercream icing.

After the hearts were sliced and filled and laid them atop a wire cooling rack, as I heated vanilla candies for the topping. I used a bag of the vanilla Wilton Candy Melts (added pink food coloring as I melted them in the microwave) to cover the cakes...I was thinking of those yummy Little Debbie Valentine's Day cakes that my mom used to put in my lunch box. The candies melt pretty quickly once they were spread on the cake and form a lovely hard candy shell to keep the cake nice and moist underneath. I finished them off with some personalized candy heart messages and Voila! Homemade Little Debbie Valentine's Day Conversation Heart Cakes!

XOXO