Still single? Me too... Thanks for reminding us, Hallmark! ;)

Happy Valentines Day!  Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is a Hallmark Holiday - and kind of a forced day of expressing "love"... shouldn't that be a spontaneous gift?  Ah, well.  It is what it is.  In all my cynicism, I do enjoy making it into a fun day.  Mine started off nicely with a huge Reese's peanut butter heart given to my room mate.  These are better than the original Reese's cups, because they have a higher PB to chocolate ratio, and that is definitely a good thing!

I'm having a few friends over for tonight, and you can't do something on Valentines Day without having chocolate.  I love cake, so I made one.  I found a recipe for this "Top Tier" Devil's Food Cake in bon appetit last February, and I ran across it again when searching for good cakes on epicurious.com [great place for finding the best recipe of any particular dish... user reviews rock].  I ordered two mini cake pans a couple weeks ago, and I thought it'd be fun for a small group of people.  I might just put it on the table and pass out forks.

Here's how mine turned out:

I usually prefer chocolate on the darker side.  This one used milk.  I did replace half the chocolate in the frosting with semi-sweet.  There is sour cream in the frosting and buttermilk in the cake.  I think the milk chocolate will balance well with a bit of the sourness added by the dairy.  I ended up sprinkling some pink Himalayan sea salt on top of the cheesy heart.  Hopefully it tastes good.  I'll follow up...

I hope everyone has a great day.  Do something nice for your friends or family.  They'll probably be around longer than anyone you're dating, anyways.  Ha.