Valentine's Sweets

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! As I said yesterday, Megan came over on Monday night to bake. We only got half of what we wanted done.

The Pretzel treats are by far the EASIEST. So quick to make! You lay out square pretzels and place a chocolate on top. (A lot of people use Hershey's Kisses, we used Wilton's melting chocolate wafers.)

I found dark chocolate raspberry flavored wafers at Michaels so I mixed those in too. We were cooking brownies at the same time so just put the pretzel chocolates in the oven for about 60 seconds or until the chocolate looked melty then placed a Valentine's M&M on top of each one.

Next we melted Wilton colored chocolate wafers (white and pink) in zip lock bags, cut off a tip and piped it on top of the pretzels. So cute and only takes about 10 minutes to make!

The brownies were a little more difficult. Our first batch didn't want to come out of the pan. (Even though I sprayed it with cooking spray!)

We used the same heart shaped cookie cutters from the sugar cookies to cut out heart brownies. I quickly realized that we weren't going to get a ton of brownies from this mix - and then we got even less when the brownies stuck to the pan.

I got a little smarter with the second batch and used the ever-trusty Wilton Cake Release to grease the pan and the brownies slid out perfectly.

There is so much scrap brownie when you're cutting out hearts... Cook's Treat!!

The lastly there's the sugar cookies. My old stand-by! Megan and I ran out of time to frost them on Monday so I did it last night while catching up on Downton. Sidenote: if you are also watching Downton, you HAVE to read the Facebook Recap. It's written as if the whole episode took place on Facebook and is HILARIOUS. Back to the cookies - The two designs I did weren't very intricate but still look great. It didn't take too long to do which was nice. And of course I sprinkled Disco-dust all over them. What's Valentine's Day with out a little SPARKLE??

Moldy Chocolate

Of course I'm talking about chocolate molds! Who doesn't love chocolate covered pretzels? It's the perfect combo of sweet and salty. I personally like the witches fingers best. They are the easiest and creepiest.

These pumpkin molds are pretty adorable as well. Wilton also has a brooms, witches, pretty much anything you can think of. You can put them on pretzels, or buy lollipop sticks (but really - why wouldn't you just use pretzels?) There's also stand alone molds like this awesome coffin:

No sparkly vampire in here! For a fun way of displaying, I put the pretzels in bags and then stood them up in a cup full of Reese's Pieces. YUM.

Memorial Day Treats Part 1: Dipping things in Chocolate

I went to my friend's legendary Memorial party this weekend. It's theme - Solo Cup. How awesome is the solo cup flag they made? I got together with a friend on Saturday and we made LOTS of treats for the party. Today we'll look at the first half of the desserts - Chocolate covered Strawberries, and pretzels!

First we melted white chocolate wafers. I think I've mentioned before if you don't have a double boiler, you can just use a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water.

With the first few we dipped the strawberry in blue sprinkles, but that messed up the chocolate and made it a weird shape. When we began to spoon on the sprinkles they looked much better. 

We put our finished strawberries on some wax paper and then stored them in the fridge. I'd recommend keeping them there until they're ready to serve. I had mine out for a little while and the strawberry juice started to leak out and mix with the sprinkles - it was a bit of a mess. But oh-so-yummy! Also makes me really want a rocket popsicle. 

We also dipped pretzel rods in the chocolate - because, why not? Next we loaded them with patriotic sprinkles. I had also bought blue candy chips to melt down, but the colored melts are a totally different consistency and not very conducive to dipping. I even tried adding some oil, but nothing helped. Oh well, the white with sprinkles looks better anyways!