Homemade Valentine candy, day 2

Day 2 of making Valentines candies - they  will look like this in the end:

I took my mixture out of refrigerator and it looked like this:

 Gorgeous. As chocolate can be.

So, what you need now -

small size pretty baking paper cups

1/2 cup cacao for dusting

wax paper

cookie tray

 Line your cookie tray with the wax paper. With a tablespoon, make equal sized mounts of chocolate mixture and place them on your cookie tray leaving about 1" of space between them. This is your future candies, so count how many you will get.

Place the same amount of the baking cups on a tray or a flat plate. Pour your cacao on a separate plate. Now - this is messy. 

Dust your hands with cocoa and roll each portion of your mixture to form a ball. Carefully place it in a baking cup. Continue until all the rolls are dusted, perfect in shape and asking to be eaten :)

Refrigerate them to harden. I have to say, mine are little too soft and I am thinking about freezing them. So it might be because I used a fat free whipping cream instead of heavy whipping cream. Well, at least I will know.

Nevertheless, they taste very good to us chocolate and coffee lovers :)

Treat for your Valentine

I am making a secret little Valentine treat for my husband. I've decided on homemade chocolate truffles. He is not a big fan of chocolate but he can eat a candy or two from time to time. To me, Valentine is about chocolate, so chocolate it is.

This type of candy are very easy to make and you can play with the ingredients to make your treat special. You will need a couple of days to make them since the mix require some chilling time. I am making it with you - so I am on a day 1 :)

Here is how - day 1

 The ingredients:

12 oz small size semisweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup whipping cream

1 tea spoon instant coffee

1 table spoon of rum or your Valentines' favorite liquor.  

Place the chocolate chips in a bowl. Boil the whipping cream, add instant coffee and pour the liquid over the chocolate chips while boiling hot. Quickly mix with a  wooden spoon to make the mixture smooth. Add rum and mix thoroughly.  Let it cool and  chill it in refrigerator overnight.

We will continue tomorrow :)

Chocolate cake vintage recipe

Cooking and just a little bit of vintage today!

I found this fabulous vintage recipe box at an estate sale last Month.It is full of little hand written cards with someones favorite dishes. I am happy I saved them and will give a new life now. It somehow feels like lifting a curtain to pick another card. I try to imagine how this people lived their lives, how they got these recipes. Maybe they exchanged with their friends or got it from their mothers. Maybe it was their favorite dishes to bring to the party. Who knows! But these recipes were written way before I was even considering cooking due to the young age.

I already tried a cole slow recipe and it turned out to be the best one I ever had!

Another day I was in a mood for chocolate and baking. So I pulled out the other card, a chocolate cake recipe.The cake is easy to make and it is very good but I would prefer adding frosting. I found the recipe for butter cream frosting later in between some cards, and will make it another time. I also found that soda smell is a little overpowering to my taste so next time I am going to make some improvements. Like my mother said: "Always add just a little bit of vinegar on top of the baking soda until it sizzles, the smell of the baking soda will dissapear, my dear!" I should have listened to her :)Anyway, I am very happy with this chocolate cake dough recipe. It will make great mini cup cakes, too!