The BitterSweets Dysfunctional Collection.
Photo courtesy Despair.com.
Forget those happy Valentine candy hearts—called Sweetheart Conversation Hearts—with their positive messages: Love You, Be Mine and so on.
Despair.com has candy hearts for those who are not in the Valentine spirit.
Choose from three different collections of BitterSweets: Dejected, Dumped and Dysfunctional.
Each box contains 37 brutal kissoffs. The Dumped collection, for example, offers U LEFT SEATUP, BACK 2 KENNEL, I GOT SOBER, CELIB8 THX2U and CALL A 900#.
Six ounces in a heart-shaped tin is $9.95.
SWEETHEARTS HISTORYSweethearts Conversation Hearts, those ubiquitous pastel sugar losenges, have been made by the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO), since the Civil War. The company manufactures more than 8 billion hearts annually.The first versions were made in the shape of a cockle shell. Mottoes printed on thin colored paper were rolled up inside. Sometime in the 1860s, the company devised a machine with a die that printed the words on the lozenge paste. The present design dates to 1902.
Messages included All Mine, Angel, Let’s Kiss, Love, Lover Boy, My Baby and Sweet Talk, among others. Beginning in the early 1990s, the sayings were updated annually. “Call Me” became “Fax Me.” (Hey, what about Text Me?)
The line now includes chocolate, Spanish and sugar-free versions.
You don’t need the time or rose-piping skills to make a special cake for Valentine’s Day.
Start with a plain iced cake from your favorite bakery, and add your own touches.
First, remove any plastic rose or other mundane decoration that may come with the cake. Then, depending on what treats your sweetie or family prefer, consider:
Crushed red and white peppermints
Red, pink and white Jelly Belly jelly beans mix, M&Ms mix, gum drops
Small chocolate hearts or white chocolate hearts
Fresh raspberries or whole or sliced strawberries
Small strawberries half-dipped in melted chocolate
Rose petals (wash to remove pesticides or buy organic flowers)
Anything that appeals to you in the candy store
Buy an iced chocolate cake—a round
cake is just fine—and top with chocolate
truffles and/or malted milk balls. Photo
courtesy Wilton.com, which has lots of cake ideas.
Consider edging the top rim of the cake with one type of garnish and placing a large item in the center: a larger chocolate or chocolate marshmallow heart, an entire blossom or a trio of large strawberries, for example.
Still thinking about what to serve on Valentine’s Day? Much of what you decide to make can be accented with red grapefruit segments.
Red grapefruit is a mutation of a pink grapefruit discovered in the 1920s. (Pink grapefruit itself is a mutation that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century.)
As pink grapefruit is typically sweeter than white grapefruit, red grapefruit is even sweeter. Red grapefruit can be found under the brand names Rio Red, Rio Star, Ruby Red and Ruby Sweet.
The rich red color of red grapefruit is due to lycopene, a powerful carotenoid phytonutrient (antioxidant) that appears to fight tumor growth. Lycopene exists to a lesser extent in pink grapefruit.
Yesterday, February 10th, was National Cream Cheese Brownie Day, but you never need an excuse to bake up a batch.
Drops of cheesecake batter are layered with chocolate brownie batter, then swirled together with a knife. Instead of making the brownie even richer, the cream cheese swirl lightens it, with a smoother texture and a counterpoint to the heaviness of the chocolate.
Zebras are a variation in which a full cheesecake layer rests atop a brownie layer—no swirl.
As a family treat or a Valentine gift, cream cheese brownies will make fans of everyone who likes both brownies and cheesecake.