Valentine's Day projects

So the big V-Day is coming up and husband and I have a whole week of vacation to spend together! Needless to say, I've made a few plans about what we're going to do during the week. But I'll save that for a later post after V-Day so I'll have pics to go with them.

First, the gifts to my husband... I got him a book called, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by the same author as 'The Kite Runner' which we both loved. Hope he likes it!

For something sweet, I made handmade treats: Chocolate almond hearts, and something I've been calling "The Gummy Bear Project". They're pretty much just chocolate covered gummy bears... Is that weird to you? It would have sounded weird to me had I not ever tried one. But then again so would a chocolate covered pretzel.

Anyway, a few years ago our neighbour brought us a bag of chocolate covered gummy bears as a gift and I, (like some of you I'm sure) was like, "what? who would eat such thing?" But my sweet tooth got the better of me and something weird-sweet was better than nothing so I tried it... and it's good! You can suck off the chocolate and then eat the bear, or chew the whole thing at once.

So yeah, I made those and chocolate covered almonds made to look like hearts. Basically for the almonds, this is what I did:

Melt some choco chips in a bowl.
Stir in whole almonds and mix to coat.
Spoon out almonds and place on baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
Position 2 almonds with the pointier ends together, so that they kind of form a heart.
You can spoon a little bit of chocolate where the 2 almonds meet to get a better "hold".

For the gummies, I used the leftover chocolate and stirred in the bears, coating each one with chocolate. Then I just spooned them out onto the baking sheet.

Wait until dry, and then eat!

My husband kind of mentioned the other day, "I don't really like gummy bears b/c they're oily". Hmmm... well I know he likes almonds so 1 out of 2 ain't bad, right?


Chocolate almond hearts on the left, and chocolate covered gummy bears to the right. I know they don't look very appetizing but whatever. It tastes all the same in your mouth!

Close up of almond hearts. Very lopsided and goopy... kind of like mine? :P