Here’s a recipe for an easy Valentine treat that kids especially will love—Valentine Marshmallow Pops! They’re a great little sweet treat and sprinkles make them colorful and fun! And I did discover something that makes them appealing to adults too—you can use them to stir into your coffee or hot cocoa to add a little extra Valentine sweetness! 🙂
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You’ve probably heard of cookie exchanges…they happen quite a bit around Christmastime. Well, how about a Valentine cookie exchange? I was invited to one a few years ago and it was great! It’s always fun to make (and eat) Valentine-themed treats! I was a little short on time, so I needed to make something fairly easy, but still wanted it to be very yummy. I had seen lots of recipes for cake mix bars and cookies, so I thought I’d come up with my own version of Red Velvet bars made with cake mix. Any Red Velvet recipe sounds good for Valentine’s Day, right?
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Chocolate and cherries are such a yummy combination! So when I found this recipe at BettyCrocker.com, I was inspired to make a chocolate-cherry dessert! The recipe I’m sharing here is a little different, because I made homemade brownies (adapted from the Hershey recipe) instead of using a mix. It really doesn’t take that much longer to do. And I topped these cherry-swirled brownies with a layer of dark chocolate—it never hurts to add more chocolate to a recipe! 🙂
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Valentine’s Day will be here very soon…and after baking some Jumbo Chocolate Chippers, I realized they would make great homemade Valentine’s treats! They’re the perfect size cookie for those smaller-size clear plastic treat bags you can find at craft stores or Wal-Mart. Continue reading
I found some great ideas for packaging homemade Valentine treats over at Martha Stewart.com…there are 13 different ideas altogether and I thought I’d show you a few of my favorites! The photos I’m posting are all from Martha’s website. Anyone would love getting some sweet treats wrapped up like these for Valentine’s Day!
I love this idea for homemade heart-covered treat wrappers! You can use these for wrapping sweet breads, stacks of cookies, or whatever other goodies you’re wanting to give.
To make the wrapper, just fold a piece of red or pink tissue paper in half three times, forming eight layers; then use a heart-shaped craft punch to cut out hearts (or you could cut the hearts out free-form with scissors if you want to make your own heart shapes). Cover the surface of your ironing board with paper towels and place a sheet of wax paper on top. Then arrange the cut-out tissue hearts on the waxed paper and cover with another sheet of wax paper. Run an iron (set on medium heat) lightly over the layers of paper to set. If you don’t want to use waxed paper, you could purchase some cello wrap, tinted pink or red (or even clear) and use that to wrap up your goodies.
Tie your sweet bundles up with some waxed twine in red or pink, some red raffia, or some pretty ribbon (1/8″ to 1/4″ wide would work) and add a cute little gift tag if you want. You can download some fun Valentine gift tag designs for free at Heather Bullard.com…click HERE to see them! The tags also look great used with treat bags the way Heather has shown them.
Another idea I liked at Martha’s site were her cookie boxes…
You can just buy standard white or brown paper boxes and place your cookies in individual cupcake liners (if you need jumbo liners, you should be able to find plain white ones at your local craft store in the baking supply section; Wal-Mart carries them, too). Tie up the boxes with pretty ribbon, and you’re done!
The last idea I wanted to show was the set of miniature gift bags…
There is a free template on Martha’s site that you can download with the 3 patterns shown above. Just follow the instructions for putting them together and fill them up with candy or other goodies.
Hope this gives you some inspiration for your Valentine’s Day treat-giving!
NancyC 