Happy Valentine's Day

I had this idea of knitting adorable little hearts in preparation for Valentine’s Day. I even thought it would be cute for A. to take them to daycare for his little girlfriends (yes, plural, not girlfriend, but girlfriends). But after about an hour of trying to knit 6 stitches with 4 needles and dropping them, retrying, twisting the whole thing, retrying, dropping the needles again, having a glass of wine, starting from scratch only to lose a needle again, I decided that baking is the way to go!

Maybe next year I will give it another try knitting hearts. I ended up finding some patterns that look promising. After all, it is important to know when to quit, right?

Since I am a food network addict, and a compulsive list-maker, I have a collection of recipes I am planning to try. It was not at all hard to narrow it down to a red-velvet cupcake recipe by Chuck Hughes, star of the show “Chuck’s Day off”.

Armed with new confidence and with the support of my 3-year old assistant baker I got to work.

The recipe is very simple, and it took us no time to make the batter. We watched with anticipation as the cupcakes began to rise.  Because I had naively ignored the instruction of only filling the cupcake mold half-way, my first batch, I must confess, looks more like a muffin than a cupcake, but thank heavens the taste did not suffer. I ended up redeeming myself with the second batch.

One cupcake had to cool off immediately in front of the open window so that my impatient son could sample it right away, and the verdict was in…..delicious!!!!

With some high-calorie frosting and red-colored sugar, here is the end-result.

In the end I think that A.’s girlfriends will probably prefer these Valentine’s Day gifts anyway.