The Sweeter Side

Despite not being a romantic person, I enjoy Valentine's Day. There's pretty bright decorations everywhere and the world encourages you to eat chocolate, cake, sweets, and indulgent foods. It's all about love for me obviously. Another reason why I love Valentine's Day is my memories of handing out sweets and cards to everyone in my class when I was little. I still do a something like that now that I'm older but with cookies and cupcakes. I personally call these cookies, "Heart Cookies of Death", because these took almost 8 hours to make. The recipe is very time consuming and requires a lot of attention to detail. The cookie was delicious, very delicate and buttery. The recipe came from Eugenie Kitchen. Instead of a rainbow heart, I wanted to do Valentine's Day colors instead. I also had left over cake from another project so I made cake pops.

I was bored with my own baking. I wanted a challenge. So when my friend, K, mentioned she had to bake a cake for a friend's birthday I knew my opportunity arrived. She hates baking. And I don't like to bake unless I have someone or someplace to give the treats away to.  I'm  not going to eat it. So I quickly volunteered (myself as tribute, hah) to make the cake for her. I already had a cake in mind. I recently went home and tried a cake that's infamous around my hometown. A Burnt Almond Cake from Peter's Bakery. A Burnt Almond cake is a layers of almond cake, almond pastry cream, and covered in a light almond buttercream. The entire sides of the cake is covered with a delightfully crunchy crumb. The almond flavor is pretty unusual for a cake and it was delicious. The cake is moist and not cloyingly sweet.  I found a copy-cat recipe online immediately. In my version, I added salted caramel macarons dipped in Belgian chocolate for decoration and caramelized almo...

I bought these adorable vegetable cutters in the shape of flowers from a cheap Japanese market. I don't really eat vegetables, but they were so cute that they inspired me to make sugar cookies. I have never been a fan of sugar cookies. The ones you get in elementary school during random holidays that were crunchy from sprinkles always come to mind. Not. Delicious. :/ Great fortune though! I found a fantastic sugar cookie recipe that is easy to make, works well with cookie cutters, and tastes great. I made icing for the first time as well. I really like the color and shine that came out.