Heart Decorated Treats and Chinese Snacks

Because it's Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year I thought I'd write about some heart-decorated sweets and Chinese snacks I've cooked. It's been the longest time since I last posted about my cooking, and while these treats are not things that I've made recently, they've been in queue waiting to be posted.

Starting with the Valentine treats, a few years ago Kellogg's came out with a new cereal called Rice Krispies with Real Strawberries, which were just regular Rice Krispies with freeze-dried strawberries added to the mix. I've been making Rice Krispies Treats since I was at least 12 years old, when I memorized the recipe, so of course turning the latest flavor into those snap-crackle-pop treats came into my mind. The same thing happened when the Power Puff version with Pop Rocks type candy was released for a limited time. How did those turn out? Not bad, but most of the carbonated candy popped when added to the marshmallow mix.

Because of the strawberries in the cereal I thought coating the Krispies Treats with melted chocolate would make a great flavor combination. The sprinkling of red color from the fruit made it nice for Valentine's Day, so I decided to cut them out into heart shapes. For a little flourish I decided to put some heart-shaped sprinkles on top of the chocolate. With the scatter of red, pink, and white I thought they came out pretty cute, and they were pretty tasty, too. I don't think the treats will be as easy to make again, though, because it seems Kellogg's no longer makes the cereal. The good thing is that it's not hard to find freeze-dried strawberries, but now that I think of it, the treats could be even tastier if regular dried strawberries, the type that are moist, were used.

I had a lot of heart-shaped sprinkles leftover from the Rice Krispies Treats experiment, so when I found the Gourmet.com web-exclusive recipe for Glazed Chocolate Cake with Sprinkles, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to use some of them. The cake was easy to make, but in my opinion it didn't have a rich enough chocolate taste. That could be due to the cocoa powder I used, but I haven't tried making the cake a second time. I'll probably bake another one eventually. I still have plenty of sprinkles left.

On to the Chinese snacks. I have a couple of Chinese recipe books on how to make dim sum. One of them is a Wei-Chuan Cookbook by Huang Su-Huei titled Chinese Snacks. Pictured below are Yam and Glutinous Rice Cakes that I made using a recipe from the book. The cakes consisted of a mixture of mashed steamed sweet potatoes and glutinous rice flour. In the middle of each I put some sweetened black bean paste, although the recipe called for red bean paste. Black bean was the only kind I had at home, and I think they would've tasted better with red bean paste. The cakes were cooked in boiling water and then coated with dessicated coconut to finish.

Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Lunar New Year!