A Very Twisted Valentine's Day

I had (sort of) big plans for our family for Valentine's Day. Usually the kids are in school on the actual day, so they receive a little present and valentine from Dave and me before school, and then dinner is definitely something they like, with a heart cake for dessert. But this was our first Valentine's Day at home since they've been old enough to know what the day entails, and I had plans for the entire day.

First of all, the kids love the cherry heart-shaped doughnuts from Weis (a seasonal special), so although I suggested heart shaped pancakes, they counter-suggested doughnuts. Well Dave headed out to Weis on Saturday morning and came back with prepackaged doughnuts, mostly stale, and not in flavors they really like. He said Weis didn't have any doughnuts in the cases, they were all packaged up like this, leading me to believe that the Weis employees must all have hot and heavy love lives that took them away from their cherry-doughnut-making jobs on V-Day. The kids were just happy to have doughnuts though and didn't complain (but I wanted a cherry doughnut and did plenty of whining to Dave).

After breakfast, Maddie and Jack (my two bakers) helped me prepare and bake the heart cakes. It was a Strawberry/Applesauce cake this year, made with pureed strawberries and applesauce and no oil. It was delicious, although it fell apart really easily. After it baked, I made a glaze for them to drizzle over their individual cakes (I drizzled the big cake).

My next plan for the day was for us to make soft pretzels, and then shape them into hearts. I had all the ingredients ready, although my flour was low. The recipe called for 6 1/4 cups, and it looked like I had 8 or so. We mixed the ingredients and set the bowl aside to rise for 2 hours. After its two hour rest, I checked it out...it had indeed risen, to the delight of Jack. But it looked wet. Really wet. I added some flour and tried to knead it in. I added more. And more. I added in ALL of my flour and it still stuck to me like honey! As I was now out of flour, I divided out the dough to each of the kids. Ben (such a smart boy) took one look at it and said, "I am NOT putting my hands in that!" And he left the table. Maddie and Jack were game, however, and they started playing with their dough balls. I tried to show them how to make a heart shape and soon gave up. It was just too sticky! Well, we plopped our dough on the cookie sheet, and Maddie brushed them with an egg wash and we sprinkled them with pretzel salt. Dave (Mr. Fix-It) came along, took one look, and decided he could not let these pretzels have such a sad and tragic end. He fiddled around with them, we baked them, and can you believe, they actually looked pretty good! I'm not sure how he did it, but they looked like hearts! They tasted good too... for about an hour. After that, they got increasingly chewy, and by the next day, I could barely rip them into smaller pieces. After a few hours, I couldn't let the kids eat them, as I was afraid it could be considered child abuse for knowingly allowing your child to break his or her jaw/teeth on baked goods.

The rest of the day went fairly well, although we went roller skating in the afternoon for the first time, which was a little stressful as Ben was crying because he couldn't make his wheels go (we got him tight wheels on purpose) and Jack was crying because he didn't like it and wanted to go home. Dave and I exchanged a few less-than-Valentine's-Day-like words with each other, and my armpits got really stinky for a few minutes there, but we made it through, and everyone was happy after the first 20 minutes or so.

Is it terrible to admit that I am looking forward to Valentine's Day 2011, which falls on a school day that year?