Red Velvet Cheesecake Frozen Yogurt Shake

I know, I know....Valentine's Day was yesterday, but I actually didn't get to celebrate because I was working, so it's okay for me to squeeze in one last Valentine's Day recipe. I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day! Since I was working late last night,  J. and I are checking out a great local Italian restaurant tonight to celebrate Valentine's Day. If I get some awesome pictures of food from the restaurant I'll post them tomorrow with the blog. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone else who is celebrating a day late!

This recipe is also adapted from the Novice Chef, this was how she used up the scraps from her recipe for red velvet brownies, and I thought it was a great idea because I had a lot of scraps leftover and because I have trouble passing up a good milkshake. You can find her blog here.

Ingredients: 
-4-5 scoops vanilla frozen yogurt

-a  handful Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownie Scraps (plus additional scraps for on top)

-2% milk to taste (it depends on how thick you like your shake)
-A drizzle of chocolate syrup (I put just a little bit into the bottom)

This recipe makes one large milkshake, but you can easily double or triple the recipe. I like to use frozen yogurt (I swear it tastes just like ice cream), but you can use any kind of ice cream if that's what you prefer.

Put all of the ingredients into the blender.

Or into the Magic Bullet if you have one also.
Blend until smooth.

Pour into a glass, then enjoy.

This shake was really rich, but it was a good way to use the leftover scraps from the Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies. The pink color was cute, but if I had additional red food coloring I would have put some drops into this to make it red also, I have a bad habit of using up all of the red food coloring I have in the pantry when I make a red velvet recipe, oops.

Have a great weekend!

Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

Happy Valentine's Day!!! If you're still trying to come up with a gift for your lover, look no further! This recipe comes from the Novice Chef.

Other Valentine's Day Ideas:
Vegetarian Chicken Noodle Soup with Heart Carrots
Valentine's Calzone
Valentine's Egg-in-Toast
Valentine's Day Crack
Chocolate Ravioli 
Tortellini in a Creamy Rose Sauce 
Roasted Red Pepper Tortellini
I Love You More Than....Cookies
Love Potion Cocktail

Ingredients: 

Red Velvet Layer

3 1/4 cups flour

2 1/4 cups granulated sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

4 tablespoons milk, divided 

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon red food coloring

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Cheesecake Layer

2 8oz packages cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix together all of the dry ingredients. 

Mix together all of the wet ingredients.

Mix the two together, this will be tough, you may need to use your hands.
The dough should look like playdough. 

Spoon out 3/4 of a cup of the dough, keep this separate. 

Spread the dough into a greased 13x18 jelly roll pan.

Meanwhile, beat the cream cheese until fluffy.
Add all the other ingredients and mix until smooth.

Spread the cream cheese onto the red velvet layer.

Slowly spoon the remaining batter onto the cream cheese, swirl with a knife.

Looking great.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350.
Rotate the pan halfway through to ensure an even bake.

Once cooled use cookie cutters to cut out your shapes.
I used heart shapes, X's and O's.

Box the brownies up pretty, these make for the perfect Valentine's Day gift!

These brownies were delicious! These were also a big hit with J., which of course always makes them a win in my book.

Some tips:
-They were difficult to remove from the pan once cut, if I made this again I would maybe skip the X's and O's because the X's were especially hard to remove. It did help to cut them all and then remove the scraps in order to get to the brownies.
-Also, be careful when you remove the brownies because the layers may separate, just be careful.
-Lastly, check back tomorrow to see what to do with the leftover scraps! If I made these again I would probably only cut half into shapes, but you do have options for the scraps, eat those before you give them to your love or check back tomorrow!

Have a great Valentine's Day! XOXO

Vegetarian Chicken Noodle Soup with Heart Carrots

Since it is soup Wednesday and tomorrow is Valentine's day, I thought I would try this cute soup idea. I learned how to make the heart shaped carrots from this sophistimom blog. I adjusted her recipe a bit to make a simpler vegetarian version of chicken noodle soup. I was a little scared off at first at the thought of making shapes out of vegetables. I thought it would be difficult and never turn out like the picture in the original blog, but this was actually pretty easy, and almost all the carrot slices turned out great.

Check out our earlier Valentine's day recipes:

You can also see our earlier soup Wednesday blogs: Week 17,  Week 16, Week 15, Week 14, Week 13, Week 12, Week 11, Week 10, Week 9, Week 8, Week 7, Week 6, Week 5, Week 4, Week 3, Week 2, Week 1

This made about 2 servings of soup

Ingredients:

-2 carrots

-2 celery stalks

-1/2 Tbsp olive oil

-1 1/2 cups egg noodles

-15 oz (1 can) vegetable broth

-1 cup water

-parsley

-salt and pepper

-1/2 cup chopped "chicken"

(I'm new to using fake meat. Check out my previous post using meatless meatballs in Italian Wedding Soup. I was actually surprised how many options there were at the grocery store for versions of meatless chicken. I couldn't find just plain though, what I bought was lightly seasoned from MorningStar, it worked out fine. The instructions to cook were just to put in the chicken pieces in the  microwave for a minute, so I put the frozen chicken slice in the microwave for about 30 seconds, just so it was warm enough to cut into bite sized pieces.)

Peel the carrots.

Cut out a notch on the top of each carrot.
This took me a try or two to get a deep enough cut, but once
I did it was easy.

This was really the hardest part of making the shapes,
and it wasn't very difficult.

Use a potato peeler to round out the tops of the carrots.

Continue to use the peeler to cut away the sides into a point.

Slice the carrots.
I was pretty impressed with myself, I thought only the
first few I cut would actually look like hearts, but they all turned out great.

Heat the olive oil. Cook carrots and celery for about 5 minutes.

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces. Mine were pre-cooked, so
I just added the chicken, broth, water,  and noodles all at once
and simmered until the noodles were cooked.
When you are ready to serve, add parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

This turned out really well. The hearts made this super cute for Valentine's day. I also liked the meatless chicken, I again couldn't really tell much of a difference between this and real chicken when it was in the soup.

Valentine's Calzone

The inspiration for this blog comes from ziggityzoom. They looked really cute, and something different than traditional Valentine's day recipes. I had also never made pizza dough from scratch before so this was fun to try. Just be sure to plan ahead to make this, it takes a while to let the dough rise. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish including prep and baking time, but it wasn't all that hard, most of it was down time.

Here are our previous Valentine's recipes:

And check back in the next few days for more.

i made one calzone, but this recipe makes enough dough to make into 2.

Ingredients:

-1 package active dry yeast
-1 Tbsp sugar
-1 cup warm water
-1 tsp salt
-3 Tbsp olive oil
-1 ¾ cup white flour
-1 ¼ cup whole wheat flour

-pizza sauce

-mozzarella cheese

Mix together the yeast, sugar, and water. Let stand for a few minutes.

Add salt, olive oil, and the 2 kinds of flour.
Mix the dough well with your hands.
Mine didn't all come together, but most of it did.

Let rise for 2 hours.

Roll out the dough in 2 separate pieces.

Use a knife to cut out a heart shape from each half.

Lay  the dough out on a baking sheet. Spread pizza sauce on one half.

Top with mozzarella.

Lay the other piece of the crust on top.

Use a fork to crimp down the edges.
Bake at 400 for 15 minutes.

 This really did look cute and was something different. I thought the crust only tasted ok, but I think I am just not to using whole wheat flour. I used some extra pizza sauce to dip pieces of calzone in. You could also add any other pizza toppings you like to the inside of the calzone, it would be easy to personalize this to different tastes.

Valentine's Egg-in-Toast

Valentine's Day is a great time to experiment with new recipes because there are so many recipes that just look fabulous. The idea for this one comes from Martha Stewart and can easily be made on Valentine's Day because there aren't too many ingredients. So wake up early on Valentine's Day and treat your lover to a special breakfast, or even better, make breakfast together and start a nice Valentine's Day tradition.

Ingredients:
-Bread, any type
-Eggs
-Butter
-Salt and Pepper

Use as much of each ingredient as you need, I just made one egg-in-toast for myself.

Using a large heart shaped cookie cutter, cut the center out of a  piece of bread.
Spread butter onto the bread and lightly toast in a skillet. 

Flip.

Fit the cookie cutter back into the bread, lightly coat the center with cooking spray.

Crack an egg into the center, cover the pan and let cook for 2-3 minutes.
Carefully slide onto a plate.

Ready for breakfast, top with salt and pepper if desired.

Pretty presentation.

This recipe was a nice Valentine's Day twist on a classic recipe, I cooked my egg for a little too long when I first made this (maybe four minutes) and it got a little too done on the bottom. Overall, this is a perfect break from all of the sweet Valentine's Day treats you might be consuming.

Valentine's Day Crack

One week until Valentine's Day! We've got some great recipes both savory and sweet to help you celebrate the holiday so check back this week and next week. 

In the past for this blog, we have made Halloween crack, and Christmas crack. So since Valentine's day is another holiday with its own candy, I knew I had to make this again. 

You can really use any ingredients you want, but here is a good starting place:

Ingredients:

-white chocolate chips

-pretzels, broken up

-peanuts

-red m&ms (I found valentine's day m&ms, they were cherry flavored)

-sweethearts candy

I used about a handful of each candy, and about 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips.

Spread out the peanuts and pretzels on a  tray.

Melt the chocolate. Pour it on top of the pretzel and peanut mix.

Before the chocolate hardens, pour m&ms and sweethearts on top.

It really is as sugary as it looks.

This is always good to make because it really fits the holiday theme. Make sure you find people to share it with though, it is hard to eat too much at once by yourself, but is tasty.