Happy Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day. I have heart shaped cookie, muffin and cake pans. I used them all over the past couple of weeks. I adore red velvet cake, and I read in one of my old cookbooks that one hotel even made that with green dye once instead for St. Pat's Day, so you can expect to see that soon.

This is from my favorite Southern Heritage collection, 1984, the Just Desserts volume.

Chocolate Marlow

1/4 cup cocoa

30 large marshmallows

1 cup milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups whipping cream (um, this is like a week's worth of Weight Watcher's points, by the way)

Additional whipped cream (ok, if you are going to do it, do it big)

Marshmallow hearts (Are we supposed to cut these ourselves?seems time consuming)

Grated chocolate (also time consuming)

Chocolate curls (notice these make roses in the picture. Who has this kind of time?)

Combine cocoa, marshmallows, and milk in top of a double boiler. Cook over boiling water, stirring constantly, until marshmallows mels and mixture is well blended. Remove from heat; add vanilla. Cool.

Beat 2 cups whipping cream in large mixing bowl until soft peaks form. Fold cooled marshmallow mixture into whipped cream; spoon mixture into a 6 cup mold. (I don't seem to have one of those?) Freeze overnight.

Unmold onto a serving platter. Garnish with whipped cream and marshmallow hearts. Sprinkle with grated chocolate and chocolate curls. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. Slice and serve on individual plates. Yield: 6 - 8 servings.

Wow. that's unhealthy. But doesn't it look good? If this cake was in my house, I'm sure we'd all be eating off the chocolate curls before the cake was even served.

I've been reading some of last year's National Book Award nominees for an online writing class I'm taking. It's funny - the books are pretty good but that reluctance to read anything assigned has never left me and I've procrastinated like CRAZY. Plus I had to actually write stuff for the class. Who would have thought?