Sweetheart Valentine Cookie pops

Some people don't love Valentines day.

Me - I'm all for it, although I guess waiting for a certain day to express your love does seem a bit odd. I'm really more a every day should be filled with hearts and love kinda girl.

Take for example these cookies, I would happily eat them any time of the year.

But they do make a sweet little display, which if your into the whole Valentines day thing is perfect :)

I make these cookies all the time, they are a favorite of the kids, we just like to mix it up and decorate them differently.

The design and recipe is based on the Sweetheart cookie pops from Sweets on a Stick (details below).

And of course you don't need to pop them on a stick, they are just as sweet if you make them as regular cookies.

Shop the photo vendors

Cookies based on Sweetheart cookies page 90 of Sweets on a Stick - details below
Pink food color used on cookies - Sugarflair dusky pink
Pink fabric background - Tilda Rosalie fabric
Small White Letter Rack - Early Settler
Pink Candy - Strawberry bon bons - The professors

Paper straws used to cover cookie sticks (cut in half)

Linda Vandermeer is a mum, wife, blogger and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US the book is available at most online book stores:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Sweets on a Stick also available at the Bleeding Heart Brisbane: contact details info@bleedingheart.com.au

Love me Love me not heart sprinkle valentine macarons with raspberry gelee

Love me, love me not........

I'm way past the stage where I pull the petals off flowers to work out if someone loves me or not.After this many years, I'm pretty sure I know where Mr Sweet's affections lie, although he does have his unique way of showing it.

A couple of nights ago Sweet herself walked into the kitchen and saw me wearing a pink floral dress.

"Woah! Mum you look perfect!" she exclaimed (despite the fact I had uncombed hair and no makeup) and she gave me a great big hug. I know she is completely awesome, what can I say.

A few minutes later Mr Sweet walked in and I relayed the story.

"Why did she say that?" he asked.

Yeah he just does not get it - SOOO not the right response.Lucky I'm pretty secure and I can see his affection in the everyday little things he does that make up our lives together.

Hopefully my family does not need to measure my affection by the sweet heart themed sugary sweets I make to share with them, but if it was they would be bursting with love about now.

This week I made macarons with raspberry gelee (jello) and little sugar sprinkle hearts around the side. Just to squeeze a little bit extra love in.

I popped the sprinkles on individually so that I could have the cool pattern, but you could just dip them in the heart sprinkles which wouldn't be so neat but would still be cute. Or just leave the sprinkles off and make pink macarons with the raspberry jelly center.

Oh and EEEEK - I just had to retype this post as my computer froze and lost it - I so hate when that happens. I want a new Apple Mac - if only Mr Sweet showed his love with new technology I would be set for Valentines day  :)

Heart Sprinkle Macarons makes 40 filled macarons

Make macaron shells (click here and make this recipe using pink food color)

Raspberry Gelee
170g (6oz) raspberries (approx 1/2 cup)
15g (1/2 oz) sugar (1 US Tablespoon - 3 Australian tsp)
2 sheets gelatine

Line a 15cm (around 6") square tray with plastic wrap and spray with non stick oil (I used canola)

Push raspberry through a sieve and discard seeds - the raspberry puree should yield around 120g (1 1/4 oz)
Soak gelatine in water for a couple of minutes.
Mix the sugar into the raspberry puree and miscrowave on high for around 20 seconds.
Remove gelatine sheets from water and scrunch out all the excess water - discard water and pop the gelatine into the raspberry puree. Mix until disolved.
Pour into the prepared tray and place into fridge until set.

Pink Ganache

Microwave at medium for about 2 minutes 400grams of white chocolate and 100grams of cream.

Mix carefully until the chocolate is melted and add pink food color until the desired color is reached.
Pop into fridge until a piping consistency.

To assemble

Pipe ganache onto one side of the macaron shell. Add a square or heart shaped piece of raspberry gelee in the center. Place another shell onto the top and press down together.

Dip sides in sugar heart sprinkles.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for at least one day before serving. Can be stored for a further couple of days in an airtight container if required.

............................................................................

and here is the link to my book Sweets on a Stick it is a US Release however remember there is a conversion chart in the back to the book for metric.It's available from bookstores in the US and here online at:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Love is in the Air cake pops with cute birds and hearts for valentines day

I actually came up with the name for these cake pops first and then had to work out a design to match. ' Love is in the Air' cake pops sounded ever so sweet, and the original idea I had was to make the clouds with just some hearts. Sweet but simple.

So I made them up but then they weren't quite as sweet as I thought they would be. Maybe I should have made the hearts red - I'm not sure, but I wasn't feeling the love in the air, so I pulled out the 'ole backup plan.

Yup birds, you know they always make everything seem kinda cuter, it's like the bird squared cuteness rule or something ;)

Yeah I'm just making stuff up now, but you all get the idea. Bird is the word - if the word you want is cute.

and talking about cute :)  I had a lovely invitation from the Dollhouse Bake Shoppe to join in their Virtual Valentine Party and it seemed like such a fun idea that I am totally in and this is my contribution.

On the 5th of February the Dollhouse Bake Shop will be showcasing a round up of other blog contributions. Here is a link to the original post opening the Dollhouse doors.

 

By the way I have to apologise for the photo's of these pops (and also the Thought Bubble pops in a previous post). It was the 6th week of school holidays and I had 3 kids behind, in front and underneath me begging to eat the pops. I was desperate, I would have done anything for the few minutes silence that shoveling cake pops in their mouth would bring, so after a couple of photo's I let them take them all. Wasn't until later that I realised how bad the light was and as a result how blurry most of the shots were.

Pretty much the 3 photo's above are the only ones you can actually see anything in.

Oh well - that couple of minutes silence was worth it's weight in gold so I'm sure you all will forgive me.

Love is in the Air cake pops
It is best to start the decorations for these pops the day before to make it easier to handle the fondant decorations. The fondant decorations can be replaced with royal icing or premade - shop purchased decorations if you like.

Ingredients

cake pop mixture (any type)
lollipop sticks
white candy melts
fondant colored blue and pink - you will only need a small amount  about 1/2 the size of your fist.
Flower shaped fondant or cookie cutter (4cm (1 3/4inch) 
Heart shaped fondant cutter - approx 1.5cm (5/8 inch) in height
Tear drop shaped fondant cutter - approx 2cm (3/4 inch) in length
heart shaped sprinkles
edible pen

These are the fondant cutter sets I got my cutters from

1st Day make the heart and bird fondant decorations

Knead the pink fondant and roll out on a corn flour (corn starch) dusted workbench with a small plastic rolling pin. Use a heart shape fondant cutter to cut out hearts and then lay them on a tray lined with parchment paper. You don't have to but I like to pinch the bottoms of mine to go to the side, or you can leave then like normal hearts. Allow them to set overnight.

Knead the blue fondant and roll out on a corn flour (corn starch) dusted workbench with a small plastic rolling pin. Use the tear drop shaped fondant cutter to cut out shapes and then lay them on a tray lined with parchment paper.

Pinch the tail and pull it up to look like a bird and then quickly press a heart sprinkle into each tear shape (see picture for directions).

If you have worked quickly the sprinkle should stick to the fondant, however if you have taken too long the fondant may have dried out already. In that case you can use a little royal icing, edible glue or melted chocolate to attach the heart.

Use an edible pen to draw on a little black dot for an eye.

Leave to set overnight.

2nd Day make the cake pops

Holding the flower/blossom cutter between your thumb and pointer squish together to shape into a mini cloud.

Line a tray with parchment paper and place the cloud cutter on top of the paper lined tray. Take a few teaspoons of the cake pop mixture and press it into the cloud cutter pressing down firmly until it is evenly packed in, turn it over to check that there are no gaps underneath. Use your fingers to gently press the mixture out of the cutter so it remains on the lined tray.  Place tray in fridge to chill until firm

Melt up a bag of white melts/ candy coating. Mix in quite a bit of copha or paramount crystals during the melting process until the mixture is very fluid (but not so much that it is watery). The mixture should be like thick cream.

I melt my chocolate in the microwave on medium low, medium is too hot and high is way too hot. If you heat your chocolate at too high a temperature it will burn and not be salvageable for dipping .Remember medium/low for short bursts of 60 to 90 seconds.

Grab a bunch of lollipop sticks. Holding one end of the stick dip the other end into the melted chocolate/candy coating and insert it into a cloud cake pop shape so the stick is sitting in the bottom side of the cloud and the stick is parallel to the tray. Repeat for remaining clouds.

Place the tray back into the fridge to chill for 10 minutes or until the sticks are secure.

Make sure the chocolate/candy coating is still melted, if needed remelt in the microwave. Holding the end of the stick dip the whole cloud cake pop into the melted chocolate/candy coating. Lift it up and allow as much of the candy/chocolate mixture to fall off as possible. tap gently on the side of the bowl if necessary. Place upright in a stryofoam block to set.

Once set you can lay the cloud pops back down on a tray to work on. Using a toothpick take some of the melted candy coating and stick a bird and heart onto the front of each pop. Allow to set and then using an edible pen draw 2 small lines to look like a beak coming out of the blue bird shape (see pic below)

Store in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

 and if your a bit of a fan of bird pops, check out my book Sweets on a Stick, there are instructions for cute bird cake pops and even cuter birdhouse pops.

here is the link to my book Sweets on a Stick it is a US Release however there is a conversion chart in the back to the book for metric.It's available from bookstores in the US and here online at:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

The future looks sweet Valentine Fortune Cookies with heart sprinkles

So Valentines fortune cookies that are filled with sugar sprinkle hearts that fall out when you break them along with sweet loving predictions and sayings - kinda neat huh.

Also a gluten free option which I know for a lot of you is even neater.

I'm doing this post a few weeks after I originally meant to, as the first idea I came up with was fortune cookies for New Year filled with sugar sprinkle confetti, but I was having a bit of a lazy time after Christmas and it just did not seem like a big priority.

But now that I have made them I'm thinking I really should have made the effort back then.

Because.......Um - super easy. Like really, really super dooper easy peasy recipe here.

and the kids can not get enough of them, 'cause you know sprinkles inside, plus the fun fortunes.

If your good on a computer you can make up a bunch of neat sweet fortunes and print them out, or if you search around there are some free printables. I just wrote mine out by hand the old fashioned way.

The fun thing about this is that you can write up little love notes that hold special meaning for you and your loved ones. Yup you have to be pretty special to be getting one of those love you more than cookies ones from me:)

Now I have never made fortune cookies before so I needed to have a search around for a recipe, this one over at AlphaMom looked simple and I though I could easily adapt it to be gluten free without much tweaking.


Apart from adding color and changing the liquid ingredients a bit I substituted Gluten Free All Purpose flour (plain flour) for the regular flour in the recipe.

I made up 2 batches, one with each type of flour and here was my verdict......

Regular flour - did not stick to paper when baking as much, made a neater finished cookie, easier to fold and shape.

Gluten Free flour - made a crisper thinner cookie more like the ones from the Chinese takeaway which I liked, however they did stick to the paper so needed a spray of oil on the paper each time. The oil results in the edges not being quite as neat and the finished cookie is therefore not as neat. Was a little more difficult to fold.

I actually liked the texture of Gluten Free ones better, but if you only have regular flour that is fine, and plus that was just what I preferred you may like the regular flour version better:)

Valentine Fortune Cookie Recipe (makes approx 15)
I just used a hand whisk to whip these up as there is not a lot of mixing to get the egg whites to the soft peak stage. The recipe can easily be doubled.

1 egg white
pink food color (I used Wilton paste)
1/4 cup All Purpose Plain Flour (or all purpose plain gluten free flour)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp raspberry essence
3 teaspoons (1 US Tablespoon) of water
Canola or Rice Bran Oil spray 
Heart Sprinkles (If you need them  to be gluten free check the ingredients)
Valentine Fortunes

Preheat oven to 200C  (400 F)

Place the egg white and food color into a bowl and whisk until just past foamy and soft peaks are starting to form.

Add the remaining ingredients and whisk in until combined well.

Line a baking tray with parchment paper. If you are using the gluten free version spray a little oil on the parchment paper.

Spoon a couple of teaspoons of mixture onto the tray and using the back of your spoon spread it out in an even circle until it is about 10cm (3") in diameter. It is best to only make 2 cookies at a time until you have got the hang of folding.

Place in oven and bake between 4 to 6 minutes until the edges just start to turn golden.

Eeek - sorry about that writing the kids destroyed the tip of the pen....

Using a spatula quickly release the cookie from the baking paper and flip over so the top is laying on the workbench. Place a fortune in the center of the cookie, add 1/4 tsp of sprinkles and quickly fold in half.

Then pop them into muffin baking trays to hold their shape until they are cooled.

That's it, the only thing left to do now is spread the sprinkly love.

I did find with my gluten free ones some of the sprinkles fell out if I was not careful to hold them upright, but that might have been due to my poor folding technique which I never really quite got the hang of.

Just an update on the book blog tour - it's still on and here is the listing of blogs who are holding a book giveaway or featuring a recipe or review of Sweets on a Stick:


1/9/12 – Moogie and Pap blog,Review
1/10/12  Still Blonde after all these YEARS Review/Giveaway

1/11/12  Random Cravings Blog Review with recipe/Q&A

1/11/12  Katy and Kid Review/Giveaway

1/12/12 Giveaway Blogs, Review/Giveaway

1/13/12 Consumer Queen, Giveaway

1/14/12 Confessions of an Over-worked Mom Review/Giveaway

1/15/12  Mommy Pants blog Review/Giveaway

1/17/12  Mom Vs. the Boys Blog Review/Giveaway

1/19/12  Mommy’s Free Time blog Review

If you miss on those giveaways out you could always pick up a copy yourself here at Amazon

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

The end

Triple Chocolate Heart Valentine cookies

Triple Chocolate Heart cookies made using my favourite super chocolate cookie recipe filled with dark and white chocolate chips. Perfect valentines for those who are looking for something that's not overly cute but still super delicious.

and I didn't even use a special heart shaped pan........that's right no special equipment here just cookies made with love. 

This trick should work for most chocolate chip cookie recipes that do not spread too much during baking. You just get 2 tear shaped bits of dough, place them together in a V and as they bake, rise and expand voila instant love hearts.


Probably works best if you chill the dough in the fridge quite a bit before shaping them into the tear drops and baking, not like the melty sticky ones in the picture above.

I also picked all the red and pink M &M's out of a mini M&M packet and stuck them on the top before baking for a bit of extra valentine cuteness.

Recipe after jump

"My love is blossoming for you" valentine cookies

'My love is blossoming for you" valentine cookies.

Yes another bunch of cute heart themed cookies, I have been a bit out of control with them, I love them, I mean who wouldn't love them.

Well I guess all the husbands and boyfriends and any other random males you might be thinking of bestowing any valentine sweetness on.


Someone mentioned they were cute but her husband would laugh at her if she gave them to him, and I guess it's true so I'll try and come up with something less loving for my next valentine post.

Although in my household, I made these and left them out whilst I popped to the shop and when I got back there weren't enough left for me to take the photo's, I had to make more.

"They smelled too good" he said, but I wasn't tricked they might pretend otherwise but men like pretty just as much as we do.


The lovely red gingham bags and twine in the photo's are from Little Sooti.

Oh and I also made some pink ones, they would look good in any colour really but I liked the red ones best.



My love is blossoming for you cookies simple instructions



These cookies were made using this sugar cookie recipe and cutting out flower shapes - the one I used was 7.25 cm and came from a set that looks like this, but don't get hung up with the sizes use what you have.

When the cookies were cooled they were covered with white fondant by rolling out fondant with a small rolling pin on a cornflour dusted surface and using the same flower cutter to cut out the fondant. I secured the fondant to the cookie with a tiny amount of water brushed onto the cookie and then carefully rolled the fondant on with the rolling pin.

I coloured some of the fondant red, rolled it out and cut small red hearts, securing them to the white fondant covered cookie with a really really tiny amount of water. In fact sometime you can lightly press it on without the water.

My heart cutter was 2.5cm (about an inch) across the widest point and came from a set that looks like this, which I got it from Little Betsy Baker.

Finally using some white royal icing I did a messy squiggly outline of the flower shape. I know my piping is not really that good at the best of times but I promise these ones were meant to be squiggly.



Let the cookies dry for a couple of hours or overnight before packing in bags.