Valentine "Kisses"

It's almost Valentine's Day!  I love this little holiday because I adore all the hearts, the pink & red, the treats, the chocolate, and symbols of love.  We can all use more expressions of love and we can all appreciate a little sweet treat!  

I've been in the Valentine spirit and trying to spread a little of it through food.  These cookies are an example of that.  I'm calling them "Valentine Kisses" - essentially, they're soft chocolate cookies with a Hershey's Kiss on top.  I first saw this recipe as rainbow kiss cookies from Sally of Sally's Baking Addiction; I spotted them around Christmas and the colorful nonpareil sprinkles caught my eye and I haven't stopped thinking about them.  

Since I didn't get a chance to make them over Christmas, I thought I'd make them as a Valentine treat, and simply swapped the rainbow nonpareil sprinkles with pink-and-white ones.  You can easily customize these cookies for any holiday/occasion.  Sprinkles are versatile and always, always smile-inducing!  These cookies are not only fun to look at but really tasty.  They are soft and a little fudgy inside, packed with plenty of deep chocolate flavor.  The little chocolate Kiss on top makes the cookies what they are (and they are so cute to look at) but they're frankly equally good without it.  You'd just have to rename them from "kisses" to "bon bons" or something.

I could not resist making them in their original rainbow version as well.  They really make me smile!

Whatever sprinkles you roll these kiss cookies in, I think they're bound to make you smile and remind you of the joy of chocolate (not that anyone needs a reminder of that)!

Easy chocolate hazelnut cookies - small batch, in a flash

It's the day after Valentine's Day and I found myself in the kitchen making chocolate cookies.  We seriously don't need more chocolates or treats after indulging (more than usual) the day before but I couldn't help myself.  I got my hands on Christina Lane's latest book, Sweet & Simple, and these chocolate hazelnut cookies were just too easy and promising to resist.  In my defense, it takes hardly any work and results in a very reasonable 6 cookies, which are sure to vanish quickly.

I hope you had a sweet Valentine's Day!  I loved seeing all the expressions of love and chocolate everywhere leading up to it.  And speaking of things I love - I'm a big fan of small-batch baking and while I often just scale down recipes/divide them in half, I adore so many of Christina's recipes from her books and her blog, Dessert for Two! I've made many of her recipes - both sweet and savory, often on repeat. So I was eager to dig into her latest book, and it didn't disappoint.  It's got all the straight-forward, simple recipes for small-batch baking that I've come to love.  

So despite our tummies being sufficiently filled with chocolates and biscuits (and with more standing by in our cupboards), I made room for these cookies, which are seriously easy and fast to make.  Follow the recipe exactly and you only need 6 ingredients (Nutella/chocolate-hazelnut spread, sugar, egg, flour, chocolate chips, and salt for sprinkling), a few minutes to mix everything up, and 10 minutes in the oven. I had time to "complicate" matters slightly...

I decided to add some chopped toasted hazelnuts into the dough along with the chocolate chips (I used miniature ones).  I always keep a jar of mixed nuts in the kitchen to snack on everyday so I just went and pilfered some of the hazelnuts for these cookies (I was in the mood for some extra texture and I think nuts help balance the sweetness).  Instead of all-purpose flour, I used white whole wheat flour (these cookies are so moist, they can take it) and rather than sprinkling the baked cookies with sea salt on top, I added a pinch into the dough. 

In a flash - I had 6 fudgy, moist, chocolate-hazelnut cookies on my counter. They are chewy and sticky (my husband likened it to marzipan), and on the sweet side so the hazelnuts were a welcome addition of texture and flavor as a bit of a contrast. Because these cookies are so fudgy in the center (thanks to the chocolate-hazelnut spread), you might want to be a little patient and allow the cookies to cool and firm up fully before removing them from the baking sheet.  

My husband brought home some sweet strawberries for me on Valentine's night (incidentally, I took a few and dipped them in dark chocolate; they were so good and easy to do, making me wonder why I'd never done it before!).  And so I thought a few strawberries with one or two of these cookies would make a well-balanced snack/dessert.  I hope you agree.

Double chocolate cookies

I revel in February and Valentine's Day because it gives special meaning and purpose to all the chocolate baking and eating that I readily do.

I think that if there's one thing I've established, it's how much I love chocolate. Chocolate treats are commonplace here.  However, Valentine's Day puts a special light on it.  Yes, I'm a sucker for the frills, the ribbons, the heart-shaped boxes...how can I possibly not love a holiday that's synonymous with chocolate!

So I took the occasion to try out a cookie recipe I've had my eye on for a while. Of course, they're chocolate.  In fact, they are very chocolaty, made for full-on chocolate lovers like myself.

This recipe comes from the Flour Bakery cookbook.  As I've mentioned before, this bakery based in Boston is special; they offer a lot of classic baked goods but there's some element or twist in what they do that makes the food just really good. In the case of these cookies, I think the special element, what makes them truly chocolaty, is the use of unsweetened chocolate.

There's really no shortage of chocolate in these cookies - both unsweetened as well as bittersweet chocolate.  The two get melted as part of the cookie base while more unsweetened chocolate is finely grated and folded in with chunks of bittersweet chocolate to make the final cookie dough.  

What you end up with is a cookie that my husband describes as a mix between brownie and flourless chocolate cake.  I think he's pretty spot on.  You've really got to take a big bite and get into the center of these cookies.  It's a bonus when you hit a chunk of bittersweet chocolate and overall, the moist center is brownie-like and full of a deep chocolate flavor that comes from the unsweetened chocolate as well as the bittersweet component.  

As a serious chocolate lover, I heartedly approve of this recipe.  It's good enough for Valentine's Day!  And I think sharing a couple of homemade cookies with your sweetie is a very good plan for a simple V-Day celebration.

A crackly, chewy, chocolate cookie

Do you have a preference when it comes to the texture of a cookie?  For me and my family, we ultimately love the soft and chewy kind.  But of course, I think there's a time and place for everything.  Something crunchy is a great pick-me-up and I certainly like a dense, rich treat to go along with a cup of strong tea but nothing beats a soft, chewy cookie fresh out of the oven. 

If I had a top ten list of favorite cookies, this double chocolate cookie would make the top half of my list.  It comes out of the oven looking a bit like a brownie and it tastes somewhat like it too given the chocolate but more than that, you get this shiny, crackly top that you sink your teeth into to reach a chewy and slightly gooey texture within that is to die for.  The texture reminds me a bit of a macaroon, another type of cookie I love.