We celebrated Valentine’s Day a little early this year, because I had plans to visit my best friend in Philadelphia with my girlfriends on February 14th. I took some photos of the girls matching in red to commemorate Valentine’s 2015!
It was impossible to get them to both smile in one shot! Sigh.
Smiling sweetly for the camera! ♥
Mirei’s expressions look so mature lately…
Dan and I got to have an early Valentine’s dinner date on Thursday, thanks to my sister watching the kids for us! We dined at Maple Ave Restaurant, which we had heard so many good things about! We were pretty excited to have a quiet romantic dinner together, and the food did not disappoint. Everything was so incredibly delicious!
Steamed PEI mussels with saffron coconut broth, chinese sausage, and crostinis as an appetizer.
I ordered the duck leg confit with caramelized brussel sprouts, truffle aioli, and apple cider gastrique.
For dessert, we had the chocolate dumplings with fried pastry shell, melted chocolate ganache, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate sauce.
…and the “omg” flourless chocolate cake. Both were amazing!
Love you hubby! Thanks for a lovely and romantic evening.
When we got home, Mio delivered surprise Valentines gifts from Dan!
A sweet Valentine’s card from Dan and the girls!
Mio signed her Valentines to her classmates this year! This was actually her first time writing her name out. We’d been encouraging her to write her name for a while now and she always resisted so we’ve tried not to push her… but she willingly wrote it this time. So proud of her!
Mio’s Valentines haul from her classmates. She loved it, and has been treasuring her bag of Valentine’s cards in the days since!
On the same day (Friday), we received this card in the mail. Mio’s preschool class has been learning about the post office, and apparently they sent their Valentine’s to their parents out in the mail in time to get to us by Valentine’s Day! I will treasure this always.
Mio telling us about how she sent the Valentine in the mail.
Thank you sweetheart for such a beautiful Valentine! We love you and your sister so much!
Dan loves all things coconut, so I made chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons for him as a Father’s Day treat! This was my first time making coconut macaroons, but I found that they were surprisingly easy to make, and require few ingredients. (I hate when I set out to make something and find that there are 20+ ingredients listed — my lazy self is immediately turned off and discouraged by such things.) I’d been feeling under the weather since Saturday evening with a slight fever, congestion, and runny nose, but I was determined not to let my cold get in the way of doing something special for Daddy. They turned out great, and Dan loved them!
Coconut macarons, out of the oven.
Nicely toasted coconut flakes!
Dipped in chocolate for extra yummy goodness!
Look at those beauties!
There was one member of the family who was not happy with the whole experience, though… little Mio is not allowed to have such sweets yet, much to her distress.
“I want themmm!”
She’s never had a chance to try anything like macaroons, but somehow, she knew they were good.
…and that she needed to get her hands on them.
Sorry bubby, only carrots for you!
Dan, on the other hand, was thrilled and very pleased with his treats. Mission accomplished! 😀
My adventures in baking brioche continue: my latest concoction is brioche with chocolate ganache! I made it recently from the brioche dough I had left over from making bostock, and I once again used a recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. The dough recipe from this book creates the softest and flakiest brioche, and the best part is that it’s so easy! No kneading at all. If you are a chocoholic like me, you must try this recipe!
Spreading chocolate ganache on the rolled out dough.
Rolling the dough, jelly-roll style
Unlike with the bostock, you don't cut the roll up - you just tuck the ends in and put the whole roll in a loaf pan and it's read to be baked!
Out of the oven, drizzled with the remaining chocolage ganache.
During baking, the side had split to reveal and drip some chocolate down the sides as well.
Cutting the loaf revealed some of the chocolage ganache filling, too. (When we got further into the loaf, you could see more of a swirl.)
It was like eating a big fat chocolate croissant! But if you choose to make it, make sure to devour immediately. We ate it over the course of a few days, and towards the end, it started to taste a little dry. But like I said, if you love chocolate, you won’t want to pass this up!
Photos are from a couple weeks ago, when I bought this flowerpot cupcake kit that I found at Cost Plus World Market. They were so cute, I couldn’t resist! The chocolate cupcakes and frosting were made from the mixes that were provided in the kit. It tasted okay, and the presentation came out a little messy…Â looking forward to making some cupcakes from scratch in these cute little silicon pots!
I swear I don’t just eat cupcakes all the time, even though my blog posts may suggest otherwise….
A couple days ago, I made whoopie pies for the first time. I’ve always loved stuffing my face with this New England treat, but this was my first attempt at making them. I found a random recipe online at Epicurious, but instead of using the filling recipe listed there, I opted to use the frosting recipe from my s’mores cupcakes. I also put my own twist on them by making them heart-shaped! (Everything is heart-shaped these days….) What I really wanted to make were these lovely red velvet whoopie pies, but I visited three grocery stores and red food coloring was sold out everywhere. I blame Valentine’s Day.
The results were satisfactory. They came out cute and the filling was delicious, but I felt like the chocolate cake portions could have been sweeter. But this may be because I have an extra-sweet tooth. What was good about them was that they were not too rich — light enough to eat a few without feeling guilty afterwards. If anyone has a whoopie pie recipe they swear by, please share! 🙂 We love this stuff.
heart-shaped whoopie pies
All laid out. I need to work on consistency of shape and size.
We both brought some back to our companies to share with coworkers. Dan took about two dozen to his workplace and they were all gone within an afternoon. I’m glad his coworkers liked them! We even got a request for seconds… maybe when we improve the recipe. 😉
And a bonus! Dan tried making some quiche! (Once again heart-shaped.) It ended up tasting more like a pizza pie but it was still pretty yummy. Good job hubby! 😀
