I love holidays.  I love any excuse to decorate, wear tacky holiday earrings, and make sugar cookies!    I especially love Valentine’s Day because hearts are just so cute.

Cooooooooooookies

Aren’t they adorable?  They’re tasty, too.   These were an order…. see how cute they are in the box?

Aww

I also had an order for a cake.  A chocolate cake with raspberry filling:

Rockin the Raspberry

I’m extremely tired so I’m just going to let these pictures do the talking.

hearts!

Lucky Sammy

I love using fudge frosting because it tastes sooo good, but it’s just impossible to get smooth.  That’s fudge for you.

So, I don’t have a tripod… or even a very good camera.  I have an old Canon Powershot, but I try to push it to its limits.   And, due to my lack of tripod, I end up doing ghetto things like stacking up jars and candles and mugs … and once it’s high enough that I can get the picture from the angle I want, I hold the camera on top of the upper-most jar, and snap! Picture.

my jar-tripod... my ghetto-pod.

So, I’ve never been a person to get into the “Anti-Valentine’s Day” spirit… or the “Singles Awareness Day” spirit.   The point of Valentine’s Day is to celebrate the people you love and the relationships you’re lucky enough to have.  It doesn’t have to be a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife or whatever.   I’m lucky to have a great family and great friends.   So, I made heart pancakes for my roommate and me!   Well, she gave me these absolutely adorable new measuring cups:

I love to measure.

So I had to use them!  I made strawberry-raspberry pancakes… and I replaced half the flour with whizzed up oats to make it healthier. (Not really sure if “whizzed” is a real word.  Whenever my mom puts something in the coffee grinder or food processor, she calls it whizzing. To whiz.  Because of the whizzing grinding sound.  Don’t know if that is a normal thing or not…)

Measuring cup in action!

Heart healthy pancakes!

Of course, the heart measuring cup doesn’t actually affect the shape of the pancakes at all… see?

sizzling happily

Sooooo, you might be wondering, how did they become heart shaped then?   Simple!

Step 1

Step 2

Don’t worry… I ate the scraps.

A hearty breakfast.

Cute… but something is missing.  Hrm.

Strawberries and pancakes, having a heart-to-heart.

Better…. but still something is missing.  Oh! I know!

CHOCOLATE!

Perfect.

True Love

Happy Valentine’s Day!