Valentine's Day Spectacular

I am a sucker for Valentine's Day.  I love all shades of pink, red and white.  I love roses and chocolate and hearts.  I have fond memories of exchanging little dime-store valentines cards in school, and I loved Valentine's Day as a teacher.  In high school, one of our senior projects in AP English was to research and present an "emotion."  Most of my friends chose anger or sadness, a few chose love, one even chose "apathy."  I was the only person in my class, and I think one of only 2 in the whole senior class, who chose "happy."  It's just me!

This year, I am eliminating gluten, dairy, eggs, soy and a bunch of other stuff in an effort to curb my allergies.  Luckily, I found several recipes that I could actually make!!!  Aside from the cake pops (which I now know how to make gluten and dairy free) I was able to eat everything I made for Valentine's Day 2012!!

 V-Day Cake Pops!!

 Gluten Free PB Cookies!

 V-Day Whoopie Pies!

 V-Day Peanut Butter Hearts!!

So the first thing I made was with my great friends Ashley and Marlo, cake pops!  I just love to decorate and make random prettiness with my cake pops.  Ashley wants us to focus more on "characters" or a "design" but Marlo and I still love the random pretty, too.  :)

Many times, I post pictures (and link to this blog) on Facebook.  Most of my family (and several of my closest friends) still live in Michigan, where I was born.  I decided to send many family members a "treat" for Valentine's Day, so I set to work.  I saw this idea on Facebook of using the Dove heart-shaped chocolates instead of a Hershey's Kiss on a peanut butter cookie.  I also found a couple of different gluten-free cookie recipes (I just had to use egg substitute) and I knew I had to make this happen!

 The Martha Stewart recipe called for peanuts and mini chocolate chips mixed into the batter.

 Little balls of goodness.

 Here are the deliciously adorable thumbprints.  I made some with dark chocolate since I can't have milk chocolate.

 They all turned out so beautiful - and I heard from several family members that they enjoyed them as well! 

I reconnected with a great friend at the beginning of February who is also doing a food-elimination diet.  She encouraged me to try some gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, yeast-free cupcakes for her daughter's first birthday!  We had a few different recipes to try, and I wanted to make a test batch so we could decide if we liked them or not.  I also wanted to make Steve something for Valentine's Day, so I bought a whoopie pie pan and set to work on my newest creations:

 Here are the whoopie pies ready to go!  I added some red coloring to the pies for Steve, to make them Valentine-y.

 For the "test" cupcakes, I used my ikea pan with it's tall, deep cupcake wells and pretty red, white and black wrappers.

 These are a little cylinders of gluten-free goodness!

 Since the cupcakes are so petite, I added just a bit of frosting on the top - don't these look so perfect for Valentine's Day!  I wish I had some time to add a nice red fondant heart topper, but alas, I do have a day job and lots of other things going on.

 These whoopie pies were perfect for Valentine's Day!

So, who has discovered Pinterest? Well, really - who hasn't?  LOL.  Although I've had an account for over a year, my friends have recently started pinning so I am addicted along with them!  I found a recipe for Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs for Easter, but decided to make some into hearts for Valentine's Day!  I made them with vegan butter and dark chocolate - and have been eating them all week.  YUM YUM!!!!

We had a very sweet-filled Valentine's Day, so now we're back on our winter diet!!!!!