♥ Happy Valentine's Day ♥

Daniel made me the cutest pop-up Valentine's Card - isn't he so talented!?

I made him some homemade chocolates. Don't be too impressed, they were actually quite easy. I made peanut clusters and almond toffee.

Peanut Clusters: melt equal amounts of chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and butterscotch chips together. Stir in desired amount of roasted peanuts and drop into mini muffin liners.

Sooo, easy and sooo tasty!

Almond Toffee: combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup butter and 1/4 water in saucepan and cook to the hard crack stage. Mix in 1/2 chopped almonds and spread onto a buttered baking dish or cookie sheet. Sprinkle with choclate chips and let them melt and then spread all over the toffee layer.

This was my first experience making any type of candy that had to be cooked to a "stage." I think I had beginner's luck because the toffee actually turned out o.k. even though I really had no idea what I was doing. At first I tried checking the temperature with the thermometer, but I'm not so sure my thermometer works because the temp never got above 200 degrees (the hard crack stage is 290). So I gave up the thermometer and just used the cold water test and it worked out!