Heading out to the liquor store to pick up a bottle for Valentine’s Day? Here are some tips:

Don’t purchase a vintage year Champagne. Vintage champagnes typically need to be laid down for 10 or 15 years to reveal their glorious nuances. Knowledgeable people who buy them don’t plan to drink them anytime soon. Instead, you’ll save money and have a better taste experience with nonvintage Champagne.

Do look for rosé Champagne, as “real” pink-hued Champagne is called. Fuller in body with a deeper flavor, it’s our personal favorite. (It’s also pricier due to the extra steps required to extract the pink color. Taittinger Brut Prestige Rosé is a beauty, with the greater roundness that rosé Champagnes have. It’s priced in between the nonvintage and vintage Taittingers, around $65.00.

Don’t buy anything called “Pink Champagne.” It is not French but inexpensive wine, carbonated and colored pink. Authentic rosé Champagne (and other natural rosé wines) get their color by extracting it from the grape skins into the white juice.

Do look for non-Champagne rose sparklers. Two of our favorites: [yellow tail] Bubbles Rosé from Australia (yes, it’s spelled lower case and in brackets) and Martini Sparkling Rosé Wine from Italy. Both are not much more than $10 a bottle, but don’t let the price fool you. They’re delicious! Another favorite, Chandon Rosé, from California is about $22.00.

If you don’t want sparkling wine, buy rosé, a pink still wine.

MORE VALENTINE WINE IDEAS

Here are some of our favorite Valentine wines.

More of our favorite rosé Champagnes.

Whatever is in your glass, have a delicious Valentine’s Day.

 
*While sec means “dry” in French and demi-sec means “half dry,” as the terms refer to Champagne, they indicates sweetness.

Buy a plain, iced store-bought cake and add your own decorating touch. It combines store-bought with “homemade.”

While you can buy a Valentine cake at any supermarket, most have tacky plastic decorations. You can do a much nicer job by adding your own delicious decorations to a plain frosted cake.

BAKING YOUR OWN CAKE

If you want to bake, you don’t need to make layers. Buy a box of cake mix (chocolate, red velvet, white or yellow) and toss a bundt cake, loaf cake or single-layer mini sheet cake into the oven.

About the icing:

The bakery section of your supermarket may sell tubs of buttercream (CK Products makes it). It’s not as good as homemade, but it’s far better than canned frosting.

Or, take 10 minutes to make real buttercream. All you need is a stick of butter, a cup of confectioners’ sugar, 1/4 cup whole milk and the flavoring of your choice: 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 4 ounces chocolate or 1 teaspoon instant coffee. Just blend them together and ice away!

Here’s the recipe.
  

[2] Look for the reddest raspberries you can find. They’ll give more red color to the cake.

Here’s another delicious Valentine recipe from Annalise of Completely Delicious, sent to us via Go Bold With Butter. Everyone thinks they’re getting a conventional chocolate cake, until slicing it reveals the raspberry surprise. The raspberries blend into the cake as it bakes, creating little bursts of bright flavor to contrast with the rich chocolate.

This combination of chocolate and fresh raspberries in a buttery Bundt cake is a match made in heaven (just like you and your Valentine?).

Personally, we’re not keen on the powdered sugar garnish. Many people like it, but it just ends up all over the place (including our clothes!).

> The history of the Bundt cake.

> The history of raspberries.

> The history of chocolate.
 
 
RECIPE: CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY BUNDT CAKE

Ingredients For A 9-Inch Cake

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch bundt pan.

2. COMBINE the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, mixing after each, and stir in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients in 3 batches, alternating with the buttermilk, scraping down bowl as needed.

3. SPOON the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the raspberries on top (they will sink as the cake bakes). Bake 45-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs.

4. LET the cake cool completely in the pan, then turn it out onto a plate or cake stand. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and garnish with whipped cream and additional raspberries.

 
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*For more raspberry flavor, add a tablespoon of Chambord or other raspberry liqueur into the whipped cream.