Ryan and I had our Valentine's Day last night and we decided to work together to make pizza, salad and cookies... all heart shaped! It's super cheesy... I know... but I'm okay with that!
For the pizza we went with spinach and cheese with a basic red sauce. We just had to use the ingredients we had already (since this was a spontaneous meal), so I had to find a pizza crust recipe that didn't need yeast.
Crust:
Mix together 2 cups of flour 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2/3 cup of milk, and 6 tablespoons of olive oil. Knead this into a dough and spread out on a baking pan. (Use corn meal to "flour" the board you use to press out the shape, so it doesn't stick!)
Sauce:
Mix together 6oz of tomato paste, 1 cup of water and seasoning. (We used oregano, basil, salt, pepper and hing.) Bring this to a boil, and then simmer for about 10 minutes.
Put the pizza together with whatever topping you like (we had spinach and cheddar cheese) and bake at 400 degrees F until the crust is golden brown, and the cheese is all bubbly.
The salad is a mix of spinach and red leaf lettuce, some seasoned croutons (cut up smaller), strawberries (some sliced and set next to each other to make a heart shape) and a raspberry hazelnut vinaigrette from the store. I thought it was tasty, but it could have done with some walnuts or something!
For dessert we made some simple chocolate cookies, and decorated them with some left over store bought icing we had, and chocolate chips. They are pretty darn tasty, and they were fun to decorate together!
Cookies:
Cream 1/2 cup of sugar with 1/2 cup of butter. Stir in 1/8 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, a small dollop of sour cream (to replace the 1/2 egg called for). Then mix in 1 1/4 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/8 a teaspoon of baking soda. Press out to about 1/8 inch thick, and use cookie cutters to make whatever shapes you like. (I got my cookie cutters from Walmart... they have a box of 101 plastic cookie cutters for like 10 dollars.) Bake at 325 degrees F until the cookies are done. (I definitely didn't pay attention to the clock, sorry... but they are basic cookies, so they will be pretty obvious when they are done!)
It was very sad though when it came time to slice up the pizza and we realized what we had to do! =P
