celebrate: chocolate and cupcakes

Valentine’s Day is 6 days away, but hubs and I exchanged our tokens of love last night. Dinner was just leftovers, but dessert because of the heart holiday had to include chocolate in some form or another.

Patrick got me my favorite cupcakes from my favorite bakery.

I gave chocolate chip cookies as a present. Patrick said, oh but I have to bake my own cookies? Well yeah. I checked out the book by the Dandelion company, Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S'more so I could copy their cookie recipe, Chocolate Chip, Maybe the Very Best, to give with the ingredients of cocoa nibs and chocolate chips. But I also stopped by the ice cream shop, Salt and Straw and bought pints of their collaboration with Dandelion, Cocoa Nib & Frangipani (Dandelion’s dark cocoa nibs are steeped to create a stunning roasted chocolate base, then candied and tossed back into the ice cream for double the cocoa power. A velvety frangipane swirl flecked with bits of crushed almonds is gently folded in for a flirtatious finish) as well as Compartés Coffee & Love Nuts (pecans caramelized in Tahitian vanilla, sprinkled with sea salt, then coated in 14 layers of chocolate). Oh and I bought myself the Honey & Lavender ice cream that I probably could have eaten some with the three mini red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting I gobbled.  

 

And now Patrick's pantry is stocked with even more artisan chocolate for his baking. I told him the cocoa nibs are probably like embellishment for his cakes and cookies.

And the chocolate snob has to have dark chocolate chunks for baking.

 

And of course, we gave each other cards. I'm not gonna wanna throw these away.

This weekend I'll break into my boxes of holiday decorations and find my Valentine's Day gewgaws. I know there's a craft or two that could use a coat of acrylic pink paint and little glass heart ornaments that I could try making a ceramic tree this Saturday.

Speaking of ceramics, I glazed a lot yesterday before shopping and running an errand. I had 3 Electric Brown succulent pots, 2 of which I glazed the text with Coyote's Gun Metal Green and this 1 in Amaco's Satin Matte Blue Green.

I also glazed plates! 6 of them in Laguna's Gloss White. I think 3 of the plates were Speckled Buff and the other 3 Electric Brown though 1 of them might have been either Hawaiian Red or Smooth Red. I think rather than play with blues or greens or pinks on brown and red clays, one can't go wrong with Gloss White on any of them.