Local businesses offer creative ways to say 'I love you

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  • 7/30/2019 Local businesses offer creative ways to say 'I love you'

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    Lifestyles Editor: Bryan Stevens - [email protected] tXXXTUBSIRDPN

    Sunday, February 10, 2013

    FeatheredFriends:

    HarlequinDucksPage 2B

    Celebrating Mardi Gras:Creative Cupcakes and

    CasserolesPage 5BB

    [email protected]

    Real chocolate can be healthy(and loving) choice

    Local businessesoffer creative waysto say I love youBY REBEKAH WILSON

    STAR INTERN

    Looking for that perfect gift to show your love foryour significant other this Valentines Day?

    Several lo-cal businessesare busy pre-paring for Val-entines Day2013 with tra-ditional gifts,personalizedfloral arrange-ments andmuch more tohelp couplesshow their af-

    fection foreach other.

    Gift ideasrange fromedible treatsto handmadec r e a t i o n s .Some itemscan be pre-ordered while others can be assembled atthe last minute. Every man and woman has differentinterests, so incorporating his or her tastes with time-less traditions can be a unique way to say, I love you.

    For Felty-Roland Florist, Valentines Day is one ofthe busiest times of the year. Angie Edwards, floral de-signer at Felty-Roland for 33 years, said that in previ-ous years, people have been lined up out the door. She

    said that most people pre-order their flowers for thisromantic holiday.Edwards said that Valentines Day is always busier

    when i t falls on a week day than on the weekend be -cause people want the flowers delivered to the recipi-ents workplace. They bring in three to four additionalfloral designers and sometimes employ up to 10 ex tradelivery drivers for this holiday.

    Edwards said men typically get flowers for women,but Felty-Roland also sells candy baskets which wom-en tend to get for men.

    Felty-Roland will have a cash and carry special, which

    AP Photo/Matthew Mead

    Warm Double Chocolate Cakes with Raspberry Sauce can provide an elegant finish to

    any romantic meal.

    nSee GIFTS, 7B

    Photo by Brandon Hicks

    Angie Edwards

    selects red roses for a

    romantic arrangement.

    She has worked as a

    floral designer for 33

    years at Felty-Roland

    Florist.

    Photo by Brandon HicksBrittany Greene,

    a server at the

    Bonnie Kate Caf in

    Elizabethton, displays

    one of the eaterys

    tempting desserts.

    (AP) Love is always sweeterwhen expressed with chocolate!Especially on Valentines Day.

    Yes, chocolate... And the moreooey-gooey deeply chocolaty, thebetter. Still, theres no sense over-doing it. Ive always believed thatwhen it comes to dessert, a litt lebit can go a long way. Thats whythis chocolate dream of a recipetakes the form of small-ish indi-vidual cakes rather than a single,family-sized gut-buster.

    Its also why Ive replaced thebutter usually found in chocolatecakes with non-fat Greek yogurt.And trust me, not only wont youmiss the butter, but you wonttaste the yogurt. Its in the mixstrictly as a lower-fat way of add-ing body to the finished product.

    What you will taste is choco-late, chocolate and more choco-late, specifically dark chocolate.Its built into the cake batter, ofcourse, but it also reappears as amelted surprise in the center ofeach cake. I suggest using bit-tersweet chocolate thats between60 percent and 70 percent cacao.

    Once the percentage gets anyhigher, the chocolate begins totaste too bitter to me.

    The eggs in this recipe (one ofonly five ingredients, by the way)ensure that the cakes will be light

    and spongy. But one of the trickythings about cooking with eggs isthat while its easiest to separateyolks from whites while theyrecold, its best to add them to reci-pes at room temperature (theygenerate more volume that way).

    So, how do you warm themup without wasting a lot of time?First, go ahead and separate theeggs when theyre fresh out ofthe fridge. Then put the whitesin one bowl and the yolks inanother and float each bowl ina larger bowl of hot water. Tenminutes later the eggs will be atroom temp.

    By the way, I find that the bestway to separate eggs is with myimpeccably clean hands, rather

    than by using jagged-edged eggshells. I just crack the egg intomy palm, toss the shell, and letthe white run through my fin-gers. This way the yolk neverbreaks.

    After the batter is made itneeds to set up in the fridge fora little while before you put it inthe oven. I discovered when I wastesting this recipe that you cankeep the batter in the fridge forseveral days before baking with-

    out any damage to the recipesfreshness. So this is the perfectmake-ahead dessert for enter-taining.

    Given my enduring love forthe combination of chocolate andraspberry, Ive topped these littlecakes with a very simple butvery flavorful raspberry sauce.There are exactly two ingredients:raspberries and sugar. You justbuzz them in a blender, then strainout the seeds.And heres a trick from JacquesPepin about the quickest way tostrain a sauce with seeds. Work-ing in batches, put some of the

    pureed sauce in a medium-meshstrainer set over a bowl, then bang

    nSee PLATE, 4B