Valentine's Goodies

I'm baaaack.  Hopefully.  I've been thinking about this blog a lot lately and am hoping to start posting regularly again.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A glimpse at the treats I made this year for my boys -

Chocolate-raspberry cupcakes with blood orange frosting, and chocolates - some with coconut and some with blood orange creme.

I'm loving the subtle pink created with the blood orange juice.  In the past, I've used hibiscus for an almost neon pink for Valentine's Day treats, but it looked a little unnatural. I much prefer this.  I used this "Buttermilk" Chocolate Cake recipe for the mini cupcakes, and added a couple tablespoons of raspberry puree as part of the liquid to give a subtle raspberry flavor.  The frosting is simply powdered sugar, shortening, a tad bit of salt and blood orange juice for the liquid.

The chocolates were made in my new silicon chocolate molds, which I LOVE (thanks, Mom)!  I used melted Enjoy Life chocolate chunks, which I spread over the bottom and sides of the molds.  Into half of them, I dropped a "creme" made of powdered sugar, shortening, blood orange juice and just a drop of orange oil.  The other half were filled with a bit of coconut mixed with honey, salt and vanilla.  Then all the chocolates got another layer of melted chocolate over the top and set in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day, too!