Sweet & Salty Valentine treats

Looking for a quick and easy treat for your Valentine? These semi-homemade valentine treats are sweet and salty and oh, so easy to make for your sweetheart.  

First, you'll need some pink candy melts and some milk chocolate melts.

Don't forget your favorite soft caramels.  

I love Bequet caramels with Celtic sea salt.

Other tools you'll need are a rolling pin (a mini one worked best for me),

A heart-shaped cookie cutter (I used a one inch sized one),

A small pairing knife,

Food safe gloves (optional),

Food mat or smooth cutting board (a smooth counter will work just as well),

Parchment-lined cookie sheet,

Fork or dipping scoop like Michaels Celebrate It scoop,

Icing bags or sandwich bags. 

Take your caramels out of their wrappers and mold into a ball with the heat of your hands. I wore food safe gloves for this step.

Make a disk like you would with cookie dough and with your rolling pin roll out to about 1/4 inch thick or to your preferred thickness on your mat/cutting board or counter. 

Take your cookie cutter and cut out your hearts.  

Placing them on your parchment lined cookie sheet. 

Place your cookie sheet in the freezer. 

 If your wearing the gloves, I found it protects the caramels from your fingerprints melting into them. 

While your caramels are in the freezer, melt your chocolates and candy melts either in the microwave in 10 second increments or a double boiler method.

(I did the double boiler method.)

Once the melts are ready take out your frozen hearts and one at a time using your fork or scoop dip the hearts into the melted chocolate placing them back on the parchment.  That cold cookie sheet will help set the chocolate.  

Having frozen your caramels it keeps the hearts stiff while dipping into the hot melted chocolate and keeping its shape.

Place your cookie sheet with your coated hearts back in the freezer to set.

This should take about 5 minutes.

Now don't worry about the extra chocolate spillage.

Once set, remove them carefully from the parchment and take your pairing knife and shave the excess chocolate from the hearts.  

Shave it gently, you don't want to take too much off at once. 

You may have a few rough ones, but don't worry we can fix them.

Now take your remaining melted chocolate and place in your icing bags or Sandwich bags. Cut a tiny hole in the bottom to drizzle chocolate across your hearts. Remember I told you we'd fix those rough spots? This can cover any imperfections or opps.  You can leave as is or add candy sprinkles, crushed pretzels, or crushed  freeze dried berries.

I found the nonpareils gave them a more elegant look.

Can you find the crushed fruit and pretzel hearts above?

I found the heart treat box at my local grocery store.



Happy Valentine's Day! 

I would love to know if you make these.  Comment below.

 

Pumpkin Pie or is it?

 

Its fall pie season again and there is nothing like pumpkin pie.  My grandmother would always take a weekend and bake dozens of pies for family and friends.  A fresh baked pumpkin pie always reminds me of her.  Grandma's spirit was by my side as I set out to bake some fresh pumpkin pies.  

With a trip to out local farmers market for pie pumpkins.  Oh yes, I did say fresh.  It was the end of the season for them and they had a sale on Hubbard squash.  They told me that Hubbard squash make an excellent pumpkin pie. I had my doubts, but I decided to do a taste test and baked pie pumpkin and Hubbard squash. Come along on my squash journey.    

I had to find out how to bake a Hubbard squash, its a very hard-skinned fruit.  I found the easy way for me was to cut it in half.  You have to be very careful to cut in to this fall fruit (squash). Its much harder than a true pumpkin.  Cutting the Hubbard in half very carefully with a knife and a meat mallet. (Yes, it is that hard) and you have to do it carefully.  I would tap it in inches and started in the center and did one side and then move to the other. This squash has almost a melon or cucumber aroma.   

Once I had it in half, I baked it two ways:  I scooped the seeds out prior to baking and the other after.  I found that baking with the seeds made it easier to remove them. 

I baked it on parchment paper upside down.  As you can see the squash is very large even in half.  That is a full size cookie sheet and I made sure to use one of my old pans in case of run off baking on the pan.

As you can see there was a lot of juice splatter, I did not add any oil or butter to the squash. 

Oh, and that melon or cucumber aroma dissipated during baking and it smells like any other squash.

Once cooled, I scooped out the seeds into a bowl to set aside for the back yard wild life. I then began to scoop out the fruit flesh to another lager bowl.  I found the skin to be very thick and tough and set aside for my compost.  

After collecting all the squash in small batches I used my immersion blender to puree the squash. 

At this point I followed my pumpkin pie recipe. 

While my dough making could use some practice, I was proud to make it from scratch. 

My testers were my unknowing family....

This is what we found:

The Hubbard squash made a much smoother and creamier custard. It also allowed for the pumpkin spices to come through much better than the pumpkin did. As you can see in the photo below it has creamier and shiny texture. 

Below is a side by side of pumpkin (left) and Hubbard (right) squash pie.

Both were made from fresh squash and same recipe. 

The verdict:  my family preferred the Hubbard squash pumpkin pie over the true Pumpkin squash pie.

If you get the chance, I recommend trying the Hubbard squash the next time you bake a pumpkin pie. 

I would love to know if you have ever tried Hubbard squash before and what dishes you've made.

Maggie