Valentine's Day Recipes: Puppy Chow, M&M Heart Brownies, and Cake Batter Cookies!
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| Valentine's Day M&M Brownie Heart |
I've been a busy bee this Valentine's Day, I guess it's because I'm single - HA! I've made a slew of things, not limited to just baked goods - check out my crafty Valentine's Day Teacher Goody Bags. Funny thing is, I've never been a super fan of Valentine's Day, but my love of baking seems to have inspired all sorts of crafts, like my Valentine's Valentine's Dinosaur Matchboxes and Strawberry Cupcakes of years past. Well, I guess you could say I have a thing for holiday recipes and crafts in general!
Scroll on for my fast and easy Valentine's Day recipes...
Catherine
xoxo
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| Valentine's Day Puppy Chow Chex Mix Recipe |
Lucky for you, this delicious little Valentine's Day recipe is fast and easy, and doesn't require baking! If you mix in some colorful Valentine's Day candy and put it in a cute gift bag from the dollar store, you've got great goodie bags.
I made this for the first time years ago, I got the recipe right off the Chex cereal box, you can see it online here. I hear this magical stuff is also called "Puppy Chow," and you can find an abundance of unique recipes online if you do a quick search. Here is the recipe that I used:
(from Chex cereal box)
- 9 cups Chex Cereal (Rice, Corn, etc.) *feel free to mix in any other cereal(s) of your choice, I substituted 2 cups with MultiGrain Cheerios for variety
- 1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (or any chocolate of your choice)
- 1/2 cup Peanut Butter (or Nutella, my personal preference, I highly recommend it for this!)
- 1/4 cup Butter
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
- 1.5 cups Powdered Sugar (though I use a bit less, around 3/4 of a cup)
Directions:
Add cereal(s) to a large bowl and set aside.
Microwave your chocolate and peanut butter (or Nutella) with the butter until melted - up to 1 minute and 30 seconds. Add Vanilla extract and stir.
Pour over cereal and mix well, making sure to coat all pieces with the mixture.
*At this time feel free to add any additional ingredients of your choice, this is entirely optional. If you want to add in chocolate chips or chocolate based candy, wait until the end of the recipe when the mixture is cool so it won't melt. Some suggestions for optional ingredients: pretzels, shredded coconut, nuts, seeds, dried fruit.
After you've added any extra (optional) ingredients of your choice and thoroughly coated the cereal with the melted chocolate and peanut butter (or Nutella), put the mixture in a large ziplock bag and add in 3/4 of a cup of powdered sugar, close up bag and shake well. If you are making double or triple batches and the entire mixture doesn't fit, you can just do this step as many times as you need. I say use 3/4 of a cup of powdered sugar to start and then add more (to taste!) because I find the 1 and 1/2 cups that the recipe calls for to be too much, but that's just my personal preference. Feel free to go all out, the main goal of this step is for the powdered sugar to coat and help bind (and de-stickify!) the clumps that will have already formed from the cooling melted chocolate mixture and cereal.
Once you get the mixture evenly coated with powdered sugar, pour it out onto parchment or wax paper to finish cooling.
*I drizzled my mixture with pink colored white chocolate! It made for a nice touch to tie in the Valentine's M&M's that I added at the end in each bag (both so they would not melt and so they wouldn't get covered in powdered sugar)
When the mixture has cooled you can add a colored chocolate drizzle (using white chocolate and any food color of your choice), and any ingredients containing chocolate, such as chocolate chips or candy, especially seasonal candy (for example, I used Valentine's Day themed M&M's). Candy corn would be cool for Halloween, I'll have to keep that in mind!
When the mixture has cooled you can add a colored chocolate drizzle (using white chocolate and any food color of your choice), and any ingredients containing chocolate, such as chocolate chips or candy, especially seasonal candy (for example, I used Valentine's Day themed M&M's). Candy corn would be cool for Halloween, I'll have to keep that in mind!
Warning: This stuff is highly addictive!! Enjoy ;)
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| Valentine's Day Puppy Chow Chew Mix Goodie Bags |
Last year I made Strawberry Cupcakes using a Strawberry Supreme Cake Mix, and I almost went the cupcake route again this year, until I stumbled upon a recipe on Pinterest for Strawberry Chocolate chip cookies using Strawberry Supreme cake mix! The recipe is from an awesome site called Sally's Baking Addiction and I highly recommend it -you can use it on any flavor cake mix!
I used this great recipe to make pink and red chocolate chip cookies for our Lonely Hearts Club Valentine's Party! I used one Strawberry Supreme and one Red Velvet cake mix for each batch. They came out soooo delicious, way beyond my expectations! You will be surprised at how perfect, moist and delicious these cake batter cookies come out, give 'em a try with your favorite cake mix.
Last, but not least, I made this beautiful heart-shaped brownie with regular and peanut M&M's pressed into the top for the staff at my sister's community center...
To my surprise, my mother happened to have a heart-shaped baking pan, so I whipped this up using a box of store bought brownie mix and some M&M's candy. It was really quick and easy! Use whatever brand and type of brownie mix you'd like...
The only bummer? The candy shell cracked...
Either way it came out beautiful. I'm not sure if there is a way to avoid the candy cracking , unless you add it towards the end of the baking process, in which case I don't know if it would look the same or sink in. I'll try it again some day to see if it makes a difference.
The brownie cracked a bit too, but hey, nothing in life is perfect! The beauty lies in the imperfections right? However, please note: I covered the brownie pan with a piece of foil during the second half of baking so that the M&M's would not brown.
The brownie cracked a bit too, but hey, nothing in life is perfect! The beauty lies in the imperfections right? However, please note: I covered the brownie pan with a piece of foil during the second half of baking so that the M&M's would not brown.
I'm really pleased with how it came out, and the staff at my sister's community center was thrilled too, especially with the Valentine's Day Teacher Goody Bags that I made for them!
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