I made a Valentine for my lovely readers...

At least *you're* the cookie!

Ok, you can probably tell from this I'm not that into Valentine's day but  hope you have a good one anyway because you ARE amazing :)

fresh out of the oven, check out that flaky crisp top!

I should add though that I did make some brownies for the occasion, straight from the Green & Black's Organic recipe book, "Ultimate Chocolate Recipes- The New Collection," (except I halved it).

They came out A LOT gooier than I expected (even though I baked them longer). They take a while to firm up but what am I crazy? Why would I complain about gooey, decadent brownies? They're really  tasty and have enough salt to cut the sweetness, crisp edges and rich, moist insides.

If you want to make your own, here's a link I found to Mostly About Chocolate (they documented the recipe and their prep process: Ultimate Chocolate Brownies.
Her recipe is slightly different from mine though, I have the newer edited version and instead of brown sugar, mine said to use white.

Hope your Valentine's day is super sweet ;) I'm always curious to know whether a more recent, commercial holiday like this is celebrated in other places so if you're in another country- do let me know ^__^?

"Kid's Stuff"- 80's Kids Playground Swap Treasury & Sweets

I felt like making another treasury yesterday but wanted it to be different from the others, less frill more silly (even though I love frill).
It started out as a Mario theme, then evolved into Nintendo, then I got into a colorful vibe and found a lot of things that would've had a lot of "street value" in the schoolyard and a few listings later, "80's Kids Playground Swap" was born.



80's Kids Playground Swap Treasury
Now I don't mean to be trite but what a walk down memory lane! I was pretty young during the era so it's centered around the more juvenile.
Also, I know the storm cloud says it was adapted by the Wii version so the theme is "80's & 80's related" :p


I also made cupcakes this weekend for my boyfriend's sister, Jess (Happy Birthday!)
These were what was left the next day, I finished them late at night and was in a rush to get them over so I don't have pictures of everything. There were some dark+milk(mixed) gem covered cupcakes but those went first.


I made them from scratch and they definitely trump the box cake I've gotten in the past (more accustomed to baking breads and cookies). I'll have to experiment with frosting types in the future but this one seemed to go over well with everyone.
I molded chocolate gems from Ghirardelli white chocolate chips and despite other things you might read on the Net, you CAN use baker's chocolate AND food coloring for molded chocolate (pale colors at least).
I need to work on my icing application but I just picked up a nice Ateco tip set and there are lots of occasions coming up for practice. :)