Valentine's Day

You either love or you hate valentine's day, right? Well there could be some in between I think. On end it comes to each of us to decide if you want to do something special on this day or simply treat it as any other day of the year.
Normally I'm not that excited about it, I mean on end it can't compare to Christmas or so. But if there is a chance I will take extra time and spend it with people I love.
Looking that this year it comes on Sunday and that both, my husband and me, don't have to work I have prepared some decorations and sweets just to enhance a mood a bit.

First I started with hot glue hearts. You can use them anywhere you wish, sizes and shapes are left completely on you. For our decorations I have printed some smaller hearts, about 5x5 cm in size.

As second decoration or better said something to go along with glue hearts I have purchased some small Styrofoam hearts and spray painted them.



For both crafts you can find complete blog here: Valentine's Decorations

What would be valentine without chocolate? For that reason I have prepared some pralines, chocolate ones of course.



For complete recipe please visit: Valentine pralines

I do hope you have the time to spend Valentine's day with ones you love and let every day be filled with joy and happiness.

xxx

Valentine Pralines

What would be valentine without chocolate? For that reason I have prepared some pralines, chocolate ones of course.




You will need:
white chocolate
milk chocolate
dark chocolate
sugar hearts
silicon forms
optional: Nutella or any other cream filling

Start with melting your white chocolate in microwave. I have used 30 sec + 10 sec on 850W (duration may vary depending on your microwave, in case you are not sure how long you need set 10 seconds intervals)

To start sprinkle some of the sugar hearts into your silicon model and cover them with thin layer of white chocolate. Shake the form so you remove any air bubbles that might formed on bottom.

Let it cool down in fridge for about 5 min.
Continue with milk chocolate, melt it in same way as you have melted white chocolate and fill up your forms about 2/3 high and then shake it again. On this step you can also add a bit of Nuttela or any other cream filling of your choice into each form compartment and then cover it with milk chocolate.
Let it cool down again.
For the last step melt dark chocolate, fill the form up to top and shake it again.

Now let your pralines sit in fridge for about 4 hours until chocolate completely hardens again.

Retrieve them from form and you are ready to serve them.

Valentine's decorations

Hey guys,

here is what I have created for this years valentine's decorations. You can find original blog about Valentine's day here:

1. Hot glue gun hearts




For our decorations I have printed some smaller hearts, about 5x5 cm in size. Just cover prints with some parchment paper and use hot glue gun to trace the shapes.

While its in cooling mode I have sprinkled some red glitter on it and then left it for about 15 min to completely cool down.

As end step you just spray them with clear spray in order to keep your glitter from falling off and complete flat shining :)


2. Styrofoam hearts



I have purchased some plain white styrofoam hearts online, perhaps you can find them also in your local craft store.

On them I have used some spray paints - make sure you are doing this either outside or having all your windows inside open!
Just use any colors you wish, I have used red and silver metallic.

As end result you will see something like this

Hope you like my crafts, let me know how yours turned out :)

Rafaello balls || No baking

Sugar is need, that is a fact :D

Here is a recipe for amazing little Raffaello balls. There is a lot of options how you do them, I personally prefer ones where you don't need milk powder as ingredient.

To start you will need:

• 250g coconut flakes
• 150 ml sweet cream
• 50g honey
• 100 g powder sugar
• vanilla
• complete almonds

As first step you need to bring sweet cream, vanilla and powder sugar to boil. Just let it come to cooking temperature and add 150g of coconut flakes directly inside. Cook it for next 5 min on low heat with constant stirring.

It will look quite liquid, but you don't need to worry about this. Once you put it aside it will start to stiffen. Leave it for about 1 hour outside and then another hour in refrigerator to completely harden. In case you notice you are still not able to prepare small balls from it - add more coconut flakes, mix it and let it for another 15 - 20 min rest.

Now, with help of little spoon, scrape small pieces and start forming your Raffaello balls. Just bring it together, put an almond in middle and then shape it in nice round form.

To finish it and give it last touch, roll all of your Raffaello balls in coconut flakes and put them on decorative plate. Measures provided here will produce about 40 - 50 little treats.

Hope you like them as much as we do ;)

M&M Muffins

Hello sweet people,


there is nothing better than chocolate in any form, right? :) I have finally had some extra time and new blog post is ready for you.
This time I made sweet sweet M&M muffins - they are delicious and completely simple to make.


As everything goes quite fast, before you start putting everything together turn on your oven and preheat it to 180°C and put butter to be melted. 



What you will need are following goodies:
1 egg
50g butter
125ml milk
100g sugar
200g flour
10g baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
100g M&Ms + some additional M&Ms for decoration

First of all mix your sugar, flour, baking powder and salt. To that add egg, milk and slowly pour in melted butter - do not put it all at once as you don't wish to have any scrambled eggs ;)
Whisk everything and old end add M&M chocolates. 


Divide dough into muffin forms and bake it for about 10-15 min until they turn golden brown. To be sure they are baked just stick a toothpick into one of them and see that no dough sticks on it anymore. 

As decoration I used some additional M&Ms, stick them to top and as they melt a bit they will stay in place. 

My muffin forms are quite small, in case you are using normal ones it can take couple minutes more for them to be completely done. 

Let me know how yours turned out :)

xxx

Almond chocolate balls || No baking

Hi everyone!

So after quite some years of spending good amount of quality time in kitchen I decided to share some of my recipes with you. I do love cooking, however baking or creating any type of sweet outcome is my passion. Yes my sweet tooth is quite big and it keeps growing :D

For today I will show you simple and easy recipe for delicious almond chocolate balls.

What you will need is:

• 200g crumbled butter cookies
• 100g powder sugar
• 100g chopped almonds
• 100g powder chocolate
• 250g butter
• 4 table spoons of rum (for alcohol free version you can replace them with milk)
• vanilla

Chocolate almond balls

First thing we need to do is to crumble our butter cookies, I used help of my machine to shred them, but if you prefer larger pieces you can easily do it with help of plastic bag and rolling-pin.

Next step is to simply mix all ingredients. As you can see I mixed dark and milk chocolate for my recipe. Dark chocolate gives it that extra taste in my opinion and can't imagine good chocolate balls without any dark chocolate in it. This is however totally up to you, if you prefer milky style go all the way milky, if you like it half half you get my thumbs up and if you wish to do it with pure dark chocolate - I would be quite careful about it as you don't want your chocolate balls tasting bitter.

After you have everything together blend it until you have one huge giant chocolate ball. In case it becomes too liquid you can always add more butter cookies and almonds or in cases it's too dry to stick together just add another table spoon of milk (not rum, there is enough of alcohol already from start ;))

Once you are done with it put complete dough into fridge for good 2 or 3 hours. It will allow it to stiffen and you will be able to shape your balls in much easier and cleaner way.

To shape your chocolate balls simply grab a tea spoon of dough and roll it between your hands into tiny little ball. If you wish you can roll each in some chopped almonds, nuts, sprinkle them, roll in coconut flakes, ... Here you can show your creativity!

As last step you only need to place them in a nice dish and they are ready to be served ;)

In case you do manage to keep some until next day keep them over night in fridge or any other cold place to prevent them from going soft and squishy.

Hope you like them!

Glitter Candle Holders

Hey guys,

so I have decided to start making some DIY & baking posts as well as videos. For first topic I have selected something that is close to me and without what I can say I couldn't live with - candles. Well for start I was making a special glitter candle holders.






What you need:

• Plain candle holders or mason jars
• Mod Podge
• Glitter
• Brush

Clean your candle holders or mason jars well and then cover complete inside with mod podge. As next take glitter and shake it all in, then start slowly to turn your holder until its completely covered with glitter. 

Let it stand like this over night so it gets dry.
On next day get yourself some tea candles, light them up, set them in your sparkly containers and have a relaxing evening :)