Fudgy Treat for Your Valentine

Get ready for some real sweetness this week because we are making  chocolatey fudgy pudding cakes today.

Besides hearts and love, chocolate is often most associated with Valentine’s Day. If you want to impress your sweetie and make a nice little treat for the two of you, try out the recipe below. The cakes are a little different from a molten lava cake which you usually dump out of the ramekin and is quite rich and runny. These have more of a cakey top and outside but when you get to the sunken in middle, it’s is full of gooey fudgy pudding like-filling.

You can cut down the recipe if you’re just making it for you and your Valentine, this recipe will make 6-8 cakes depending on the size of your ramekins.

First of all, butter those ramekins so nothing burns and sticks too much and then place the ramekins on a baking sheet just in case there is some bubbling over. You can even line the baking sheet with tin foil if you don’t want to have to wash the sheet afterwards. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

You will need the following ingredients...

2/3 cup of cocoa powder

6 Tbsp. of butter

¼ cup of semisweet chocolate

¾ cup of flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup of granulated sugar

1/3 cup of brown sugar

1/3 cup of milk

1 tbsp. vanilla

1 large egg yolk

¼ tsp. salt

1 ½ cups of weak coffee

In a heat proof bowl, heat up 1/3 cup of the cocoa, the butter, and the chocolate in the microwave until all melted together. Make sure you stir it often. Set aside and let cool for a bit.

In a small bowl, whisk the flour and baking powder together.

In another bowl, whisk up the rest of the cocoa with the brown sugar and 1/3 cup of the granulated sugar. Set aside.

In yet another bowl, this time a larger one, whisk the remaining granulated sugar with the milk, vanilla, egg yolk, and salt. 

Add in the chocolate mixture followed by the flour mixture. 

Divide the batter amongst the ramekins. We used a heaping ¼ cup measuring cup to fill the ramekins up with. Smooth them out a bit and then sprinkle the sugar chocolate mix over the tops (about 2 Tbsp. per cake). 

Lastly, you can pour about 3 Tbsp. of your weak coffee over each cake. You can use any type of coffee that you like. I used instant coffee because I made the cakes at night and didn’t want to brew a whole pot. You can also use water if you really don’t like coffee.

Bake the cakes until they are puffed up and bubbling, 15-20 minutes. Try not to over bake them as you don’t want dry pudding cakes. So keep your eye on them. 

Don’t be alarmed when you take them out of the oven and let them cool; they will fall in the middle so it looks like a big crater in the center. This is supposed to happen. 

While you let the cakes cool, whip up some cream to serve in the center or you can put vanilla ice cream in the center as well. Whatever you like. 

After the cakes have cooled for about 15 minutes (you want to eat them warm not super hot), serve to your sweetie or to whomever you are baking them for and enjoy. 

Origami Hearts

With less than a month before Valentine’s Day, we are going to start our Valentine themed posts. We’ve got some cute crafts and some yummy recipes to try out for you so we hope you enjoy them!

This week we are going to try something a little different. We are going to make heart shaped origami creations that you can hand out to your friends, family, and sweetie or you can just use them as little decorations.

Nicole is the origami pro so she is going to do all of the folding.

You will need a square piece of origami paper or thinner paper. Cardstock is a bit too thick so you probably don't want to use it for this type of project. We’ve picked a piece of origami paper that you can buy in a pack from the craft store; it is a 5 7/8 inch square but it doesn’t matter what size you use as long as it’s square. Use a smaller piece if you want to make a smaller heart or larger to make a larger one.

1. Take your piece of origami paper and fold in half and unfold, so you have a centre line.

2. Fold the top two corners down to the centre line. Flip over.
     Your paper now looks like a triangle on top of a rectangle.

3. Fold the bottom of the paper, up to meet the bottom of the triangle portion. Flip over.

4. Fold both sides in to the centre line. Unfold.

5. This part is a bit tricky to explain. Fold the two sides in again, however, the triangle portion on the top needs to be folded 'inside-out'. Do this by opening the top corner and folding in the bottom portion first, then folding the top in. Some of the folds on the top will be opposite from the original fold, but on the same line.

6. Flip over. Fold the top point down to meet the bottom edge. Flip over again.

7. Open the flaps at the top, and flatten the sides in.

8. Fold the inner corners down to make to points at the top. Fold the points down a bit to create flat tops.

9. Flip over.

10. Lift up the bottom of the heart to find a little pocket.

Now you have a cute origami heart! You can leave it as it, or write a little message and put it inside the little pocket  to give to someone special, or you can even use it as a little Valentine card and write a “to and from” note on the front.

Crafting with the Colour of the Year

We are still in the Ultraviolet mood so we came up with a

fun quick and easy craft to keep it with you all year long. I had so much fun coming up with little bookmarks for the craft fair that I thought I’d come up with one that utilizes shades of purple. I made sure to get in the Ultraviolet shade which is the base of the bookmark that has a nice blue undertone to it.

This is a super easy craft to do especially if you have scrap pieces of cardstock and pre-punched and stamped shapes.

I took a piece of dark purple cardstock. Make it whatever length and width that you wish. Mine was shorter and not too wide.

Then I glue taped a strip of a lighter shade of purple and then an even lighter greyish pastel purple strip over that.

I punched out two purplish greyish blue one inch circles and then one about two inches for the center. I then glued them on evenly.

Lastly, I had a dark blue stamped and embossed flower which I glued on the middle circle. I thought blue would look nice amongst all of the purples plus it really brings out the blue tone from the darkest purple.

We also thought that we’d look through to find our purplest cards that we have made and share those with you in honour of Ultraviolet. Enjoy.