Something Sweet for Valentines

Make your own chocolate sweets this Valentines

Skipe to recipe

If you visit any corner shop, roadside service station or chain store on the evening of the 14th of February you are likely to encounter a horde of anxious looking men grabbing flowers, chocolates, cards and of course the proverbial bottle red wine. All this to impress, albeit late in the day, a girlfriend or spouse with a material show of attention and devotion.

Last Valentines Day I noticed an old school chum of mine in line to pay for an armful of gifts for his girlfriend, who just so happened to be a close confidant of mine. We would occasionally meet for a coffee and wrestle with life’s little foibles over a Mocha Frappuccino. During one of our tete-a-tete she disclosed to me, as she sprinkled an overly generous helping of cinnamon powder into her frapp, that her boyfriend wasn’t the most attentive. “He never listens to a word I say.

Honestly, sometimes I am invisible when I am talking to him. It is as if he is looking straight through me into another world. I do not know how many times I have told him that I do not like dark chocolate yet every Christmas there is a giant box of Black Magic chocolates in my stocking. I think he thinks he is being heroic like that suave adonis in the TV advertisement for Black Magic chocolates who lithely scales walls and swings through open windows from a rope dangling from a hovering helicopter to secretly delivering a box of these dark chocolate delights to the woman he loves as she sleeps lost in a dreamscape of passion and desire oblivious to the antics and heroic sacrifices her lover has made just to satisfy her passion for a bit of dark chocolate.I noticed that my old school chum was looking rather pleased with himself as he waited in the queue with a rather large box of Black Magic under his arm and clutching a bottle of red wine in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other.

I debated intensely with myself whether or not I should go over and burst his bubble by spelling out in very descriptive terms how his girlfriend had stopped drinking red wine over eighteen months ago, how certain flowers increased her chance of having an allergic reaction and that dark chocolate just wouldn’t be her choice of a sweet treat. Instead, I just stood there watching as the herd of late night Valentino’s frantically grabbed anything they could get their hands on in the hope that these ostentatious offerings would redeem their standing and keep them out of the dog house.But how did we come to this? Why is It that a man thinks a bottle of wine and a bunch of overly priced filling station flowers presented as a love offering once a year on Valentine’s Day is his ticket to romantic bliss. It seems it may have all started with the Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off women with men by lottery. (A bit like today when you go on holiday to Ibiza and by some alcohol infused lottery you end up with Susan from Tunbridge Wells) At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I forbade the celebration of Lupercalia and is sometimes attributed with replacing it with St. Valentine’s Day, but the true origin of the holiday is vague. Valentine’s Day did not come to be celebrated as a day of romance until about the 14th century.Although there were several Christian martyrs named Valentine; the day may have taken its name from a priest who was martyred about 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus. According to legend, the priest signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and, by some accounts, healed from blindness. Other accounts hold that it was St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, for whom the holiday was named, though it is possible the two saints were actually one person. Another common legend states that St. Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love.

Whenever and however and this feast day started what most people are not aware of is that the remains of St Valentine are held in a shrine at Whitefriars church Dublin. Today, the Shrine is visited throughout the year by couples who come to pray to Valentine and to ask him to watch over them in their lives together.

In keeping with the great schism of 1054 Orthodox Christian’s celebrate Valentine’s Day not once a year but twice a year on the 6th and 30th July so if you forget to buy your loved one a bunch of flowers this 14th of February you will have ample time in July to make amends.

Recipe

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup cocoa powder1/4 cup pure maple syrup

Few drops vanilla essence

Pinch of sea salt

Method

Slowly melt the coconut oil in a glass bowl (see picture )

Combine all other ingredients when the coconut oil is clear

Spoon the mixture into Sweet/Petit Fours Cases.

You can place a filling of your choice in the centre of the case. I use dried dates or cranberries.

When the filling is covered with the chocolate mix, sprinkle them with dissociated coconut To make chocolate buttons, spoon just enough of the mix to thinly cover the bottom of the case.

Place in the refrigerator to set.

Server with tea or coffee.

Happy Valentines chocolatiering!