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Happy Valentine's Day! Molten Nutella Handpies with Bob's Red Mill
We used to decorate brown lunch bags and hang them from our desk. Write our names in felt-tipped pens. We passed around stickered love notes, miniature candy bars. We all left feeling loved in those winter school days. It made us feel good to get a card from the pretty girls, even if they were obligatory. A week later, they’d all be in the trash. A month later, my mother would buy the remaining Valentine’s Day candy in the clearance aisle and we’d have it in our baskets by Easter. Love like that was budgeted. Obligatory, too.
I was 18 when I first celebrated a Valentine’s Day. I bought him gloves at a Macy’s in downtown so his hands weren’t so cold when he held mine. He bought my dinner—a Big Mac—and I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world. A week later, he proposed to me at a park where three rivers intersected. A month later we never talked again and I was relieved the day he told me he wanted to leave me. We were in a pizza place down the road from my dorm. I think he’s a waiter now somewhere out West. I don’t think of him much. Not at all, actually. But for a month I was sure I’d marry him. If for no other reason than because I was bored.
I lived for years thinking love was an obligation, a chore others had to do that I was too lazy or too unwilling to do myself. I spend even more years thinking it was an all-or-nothing bargain. I spent weekends in November thinking of how to end my relationships; I spent hours in February wrapping presents instead. Love for me came in waves, crashing and then disappearing for complete lunar cycles. Love for me came in soft like crickets and then fast like an EKG. Cicadas when it was good, loud and cacophonous in the summertime, then it’d die back down into molted skins—dry, brittle, blurred shapes of what it used to hold for us.
From Indian fast food where we shared our plates to an underground lake in Cancun where we fought about sex, from a weekday we forgot to go out to a five minute phone call, I have shared Valentine’s with boys who felt obligated to care for me. I was so desperate for anything they could give. I know now that I wasn’t the heart or the hand glove. Not the paper bag or the cavities. I was desperate and lonely, but I was young, too. This year I’m spending Valentine’s Day alone for the first time in six years. I’ll wake up like it’s any other day, but take time for myself. Drink coffee, stay in bed until I have to wash my face and start my day. Eat a bowl of cereal and a couple of these hand pies. I have years of celebrating ahead of me, but it’s good to be alone this year.
Molten Nutella Handpies
With Bob’s Red Mill’s coconut flour and a spoonful of Nutella to come spilling out of these bad boys, you can share these with that special someone or have them all for yourself. Makes 24 4-inch handpies (go crazy)
Ingredients:
- 2 cup AP flour
- 1 cup coconut flour
- ½ cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons instant espresso
- 1 ½ cup white sugar
- 8 tablespoons butter, cold
- ½ cup shortening, cold
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 8-9 tablespoon ice water
- 2 jars Nutella hazelnut spread (if you want them really molten and gooey)
- 1/3 cup of flaked sea salt (a pinch per handpie)
- 1 egg, mixed with a little water for an egg was
Directions:
1. Sift flours, cocoa powder, espresso, and sugar into the bowl of your food processor. Pulse twice to incorporate
2. Pulse in your fats, running motor until flour-fat mixture is the size of peas
3. With the motor running, add vanilla and then ice water, a tablespoon at a time
4. When dough begins to clump, turn motor off and turn onto a heavily floured work surface
5. Knead only a couple times to form into a disc and cut dough in half. Shape both halves into discs and refrigerate for an hour
6. While dough is resting, prep your station. You will need your Nutella, a couple spoons or a mini ice cream scoop, extra flour (this dough can handle it), your egg wash, a pastry brush, and 2 parchment-lined baking sheets
7. Take dough out of fridge when finished resting and you can preheat oven to 350*F now (assembling the handpies can take a bit of time, if you’re doing the whole 24)
8. Roll one disc out to be about a quarter inch thick and using either a floured 4-inch cookie cutter or even a glass and begin cutting out your rounds. One half your yield 24 rounds
9. Evenly space your rounds onto the parchment lined baking sheets and spoon some Nutella into each one, add a pinch of salt
10. Roll out second disc of dough and repeat steps of cutting out your rounds
11. For each round out of this disc, you will be placing on top of the prepared rounds that have Nutella on them
12. Lightly dip your pastry brush into your egg wash and go around the rim of the prepared Nutella-topped round. Place second round on top. Crimp with a fork to seal. Cut a small X on each one with a paring knife to vent the handpies while baking.
13. Repeat steps 11 and 12 for remaining 23 handpies
14. Brush each with an additional little egg wash for a nice crust while baking
15. Bake at 350* for 33-36 minutes. Enjoy immediately as the hazelnut spread oozes out like a molten chocolate cake
16. Enjoy and kiss someone cute for me!
Note: I am fortunate enough to be a Bob's Red Mill brand ambassador this year and will be partnering with them more and more throughout the year. While Bob's Red Mill supplied the ingredient, coconut flour, for this post, all opinions are my own. Check out their website for more information on all the amazing products they have to offer!
Avoiding the Red Cliche
Most things come easily to me, things you wouldn't expect from a boy with no discernible talent. Things like baseball, calculus, forgiveness never came easy to me, but love did. Love in the carnal sense, love in the fictional sense. Love in the sense of letting go, love in the sense of finding yourself. Love in the sense of that ever-present gnaw at the pit of your stomach that registers in the mind as I am responsible for someone else's happiness. Love has come easily to me since birth. I love my mother in an almost manic sense, an almost Oedipal obsession with my desire to make her smile. In kindergarten, I kissed a girl named Alex's hand when she reached out to grab a colored pencil, I thought I was gentlemanly and adult of me. Years of expansive love bloomed in me as I began to daydream of boyfriends and how exotic the word fiancé sounded, with it's accented e and promise of a future with someone else. With each boyfriend, there was a breakup, and with each breakup, there was some promise of next time, next time, next time. I found Nolan during one of those next times. During my return to Italy, when we were both a little bruised, both a little cut up and the vinegar kisses of a stranger felt like when soap gets in a hangnail. But, underneath all of that, once we stripped down and opened up, there was love.
It was raw and passionate, it left me heady in the perfumed 10x8 dorm room where the heat was on and a blizzard blew through Pittsburgh one night in January.
It was lazy, falling asleep with a bucket of chicken during XLV.
It was chaotic in the sense of never having an ending, never knowing the dates of anything important, throwing shoes and his grandmother's dishes when I got too angry and forgot to say, "I'm sorry."
But I was never sorry, never sorry for loving someone so ferociously and tender. I'd lick the wounds I had created and then blame the rust-taste in my wolf mouth on his laziness, his determination to let our love fade away. It was raw and passionate, it was lazy and chaotic. And somehow love became this little succulent, never needing watered, collecting dust on the windowsill, timid in its approach to life. Our love had a geophyte approach to sustainability, fatty and tuberous, holding onto any love that existed when life got barren and dry. When it got hard to come by, when it couldn't be found in the moonlight nor with a dowsing rod, broken off from a backyard apple tree when the Santa Anas made us unbearable to one another.
Since I left for Texas, we fell in love again--hard and fast, when the bones were most brittle. An apologetic love where conversations often ended in "How did it get like this?" We are finding our way back to the frenzied love of when I was 19, and slowly those sour wounds heal when they're exposed to air. I wanted to celebrate this love for Valentine's Day and forget all the other four years and the bullshit we put one another through. I wanted to celebrate this love in boxes, small tins of love that overpowered Nolan for Valentine's Day. I wanted to remind him what home could feel like. I wanted to remind him what love could feel like, because our house in San Diego was big by San Diego standards, and it could creak too loud when you're lonely. I made him dinner, cakes and bread, and shipped it to him to have for Valentine's Day with a movie, so it felt like a date tonight.
I love you.
“He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”
Roasted Beet Pasta
Ingredients:
- 2 large-sized beets
- 3 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
- 6+ cups flour
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 450
- While oven is preheating, peel beets and wrap in foil, place on baking tray. When oven is ready, roast for 40 minutes.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes, unwrapping so steam can release
- Cut into large chunks.
- In a large food processor (6 cups or more), throw in beets, eggs and yolk, olive oil, and salt (and optional zest). Puree until smooth
- In a stand mixer, combine puree and three cups of flour using the paddle attachment. When dough begins to form, switch to dough hook and continue to mix, adding in last three cups of flour, one at a time, until a proper dough forms
- Remove from bowl onto a floured work surface (i prefer marble for pasta-making) and knead for 7 minutes or until is elastic
- Keeping dough floured, cut into eighths and lay plastic wrap on sections you are not going to use.
- Use your pasta machine's directions for thick noodles, and dry.
- Enjoy with a vinaigrette and parmesan!
Bacon Salt
Ingredients:
- 5-6 strips of bacon
- 1/2 cup sea salt (preferably a larger crystal)
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Directions:
- Fry bacon on a skillet until extra-crispy
- Put on a plate lined with paper towels and allow to cool, blotting excess grease
- In a food processor, combine all ingredients and pulse until combined. Do not over-pulse, as it can result in fats in bacon to liquify.
- Enjoy over popcorn, with potatoes, or be creative!
Handcrafted Candy Bars
There is no real recipe for a basic candy bar. I used some of my mother's recipes, which use more specialized chocolate and techniques, but the instructions I have below can be practiced even with chocolate chips. From here, you can personalize them and make them your own, even including honeys, spices, herbs, salts, and even homemade nut butters! But, I would start here for an intro into confectionery.
Before you begin, use a ratio of 3 oz per candy bar, so you have some room for leeway with sticking to the bowl, the mold, and your spatula. From here, you can cut and halve, mix chocolates together and multiply easily. I particularly like mixing white chocolate and a milkier, lighter chocolate. When you have decided how you would like to flavor your chocolate, measure out how much you will need. Then, take away about 30% of that amount and set aside (this will be your "seed chocolate", a step for this pseudo-tempering. It is necessary so your chocolate doesn't turn grey when cooled).
Prepare any mold you may be using. I always use a light olive oil cooking spray and then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.
In a microwave-safe bowl, combine your remaining chocolates and microwave on HIGH for 20 seconds. Take out and stir. Put back in for another 20 seconds and repeat this process until all chocolate is silky smooth and easy to stir.
Add remaining chocolate and continue to stir. The heat from the melted chocolate should melt remaining chocolate.
Add any add-ins and pour into mold and smooth out with a rubber spatula. Allow to cool for at least half an hour in the fridge before unmolding. Package however you want (I went a little far with homemade packaging I designed and printed on special paper, but basic foil will do). Store in a cool place, or the fridge.
Other recipes used: For the cake (marzipan inspiration here)/ For the hot chocolate mix / For the marshmallows / For the bread.