Why I love Valentine’s Day

It’s the chocolate. Yep. I really got into it this year too.

For our Relief Society activity we are doing the 5 Love Languages and our  committee decided that a chocolate buffet would be a really yummy and fun thing to go along with the theme. I offered to make a chocolate torte/tart (I don’t really know what it’s called or what the difference between a torte and a tart is but anyway…)

It looks velvety and heavenly:

It was actually a recipe for Chocolate Raspberry Tartlettes which I just made into a tart (there you go, I guess it’s a tart) and left off the raspberries. Raspberries were almost $5 per container at the store. I would have needed a few containers. I couldn’t bring myself to buy them. Sorry. But it’s still pretty. I shaved white chocolate over the top and added red sprinkles.

I know I was supposed to use a removable bottom pan but I really liked these ceramic heart shaped pans. It should still be fine when we serve it. I hope?

While I was browsing the Ghirardelli website I also found a recipe for Dark Chocolate Truffles and wanted to give them a try too. So I did.

They absolutely melt in your mouth!

Then, as if that wasn’t enough chocolate and baking and mess and work and etc… I’d also told my girls that we would make sugar cookies for their classmates for Valentines. Katherine’s class is having their party tomorrow so we made her cookies today.

Katherine also had the special privilege of bringing their preschool buddy home for the day. His name is Oreo. Look, his name is even chocolate! He got to help us bake the cookies. (His name is a cookie too! Perfect!)

I was going to do a powdered sugar icing and write each of her classmates names on the cookies. That was the plan but I decided that would be too much work and I was running out of energy and time.

So instead, I found some icing, sandwiched it between 2 cookies and then melted some chocolate and dipped the cookies into that.

Ooh! Spectacular! Katherine hasn’t seen them yet. She fell asleep but I know she’s going to love them!

mmm…

Just the smell of chocolate in this house is putting me into a chocolate coma. Hopefully I’ll come out of it in a few days but there’s no hurry. :)

In the meantime, it’s time to go make name tags and cut some red ribbon for the cookie baggies and get ready for Relief Society.