Valentine's Day Dinner & a Recipe!

Can't believe it's been almost 3 weeks since my last post! But between phone crashes & upgrades and computer crashes & fixes (phew!) I haven't really had the chance to blog lately.. I will FINALLY get the ball rolling here with a post!

I should be heading to bed but I can't without posting the loveliness that I came home to after a long day of work.. We don't usually make a big fuss out of Valentine's Day (Steve is always romantic every other day of the year, lol) except to use it as an excuse to make "gourmet" meals and just spend the time together. Here's what my love made for me tonight...

We had roasted Alaskan salmon & Chilean sea bass (I had salmon, he had sea bass) that was marinated with soy sauce, lime, ginger, scallions and garlic (and possibly more ingredients?) with white rice and roasted asparagus. Yummy!

I knew what the menu was going to be beforehand (I even bought the ingredients, lol) but I didn't realize it'd be as fancy as this!  He sliced the lemons into very thin rounds and even made the scallions into these tiny, pretty pieces as garnish!

Mmmmm it was awesome. And he made everything! I loved it! Iloveyou, Stephen :o)

And of course, I took care of dessert and made us homemade chocolate peanut-butter cups, one of Steve's favorite chocolates (and he's not usually a fan of sweets). Wow those were so a-maaa-zing! Wish I could take credit for the recipe! I couldn't believe how easy they were to make and we had all the ingredients already. So that is the recipe I'm going to post here.  (If I can find out from Steve what he marinated the fish in, I'll post that another time.)

Hope everyone else had a lovely day with their loves... <3

Chocolate Peanut-Butter Cups
Adapted from Design*Sponge
Yields 12 cups





Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups chocolate, any kind - I used organic semi-sweet chips
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/8 cup graham crackers, crushed into crumbs
1/2 tsp sea salt


** One main difference between this recipe & mine - my recipe is half of what the original recipe called for but I still had enough for 12 mini-cups!  Use the original recipe if you're using regular muffin tins (and making gigantic cups) or making 24 mini-cups. 


Directions:

1. Line a muffin pan with 12 paper liners. Set aside.

2. Melt 1 1/2 cups of the chocolate in a double boiler. Alternately, you could do this using a microwave, melting the chocolate in short bursts. Remove the bowl of melted chocolate from the stove and turn off the heat.

3. Using the back of a spoon or a pastry brush, paint a layer of melted chocolate onto the bottoms and sides of the paper liners. Don’t skimp on chocolate here; coat the liners generously. Set the bowl aside with any remaining melted chocolate left in it. (I saved enough to coat the tops of the cups).

4. Put the muffin pan in the refrigerator for 20 minutes while you make the peanut-butter filling.

5. In a mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter, crushed graham crackers, powdered sugar and salt. Stir with a spoon until well combined.

** I skipped this step because I had enough chocolate leftover: 6. Return the bowl used to melt the chocolate to the top of the double boiler. Turn the heat to medium-high. Add more chocolate if desired

7. Meanwhile, divide peanut-butter mixture into 12 even amounts. (I used a cutting board while doing this to have a surface to rest the mounds on.)

8. Remove the muffin pan from the refrigerator. Put one mound into each paper liner. Tap down each mound with your fingertips to “nest” it into the chocolate bottom.

9. By now, the chocolate added to the double boiler should all be melted. Using a spoon, dollop the top of each peanut butter mixture mound with a generous portion of chocolate.

10. Use the back of a teaspoon to smooth out the tops (alternately, use the spoon to make a swirl atop each cup).

11. Place the muffin pan in the refrigerator. Within one hour, your cups should be set, depending how cold your fridge runs.

ENJOY!