Project Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is less than a week away and what better way to show someone you care with a little DIY and recipe love! Shalyn Kettering, VP at Two Bright Lights/Done Brilliantly and her team will show you how to impress your special someone this Valentine’s Day with some yummy and easy-to-make petit fours, pudding cocktails, and a festive heart banner. All of the lovely details were captured by Katie of Trail of Sunshine.
Petit Fours – The Insides
Many petit fours recipes call for complex cake concoctions for the insides, but we took an easier route. We took some Nilla Wafers and pre-made frosting to make mini Nilla sandwiches.
The Outsides
To get a smooth look, we wrapped fondant around the Nilla sandwiches. For the fondant we used marshmallows instead of the usual ingredients like gelatin and corn syrup. It makes the fondant tastier and it’s much easier to make. The recipe can be found here.
We added the color as the fondant began to solidify. We wanted multiple colors out of one recipe, so we got a sense for how much the recipe made and broke up pieces based on how much we wanted of each color.
Tips:
- You only have one shot to create the color in the fondant. Its very hard to add more color because of how quickly the fondant changes consistency. We added very little food coloring and our fondant was a bit neon looking. So less is more.
- Do not overknead. If you do the fondant becomes grainy.
- The amount of water is a bit of guessing game. Add 3 cups of water and with the last cup, simply dip your fingers in and use the water as you “knead” the fondant.
Put It Together
Roll out the fondant and then place a Nilla sandwich near the edge. Then create a circle a bit beyond the edge of the sandwich. Gently wrap the sandwich pressing and stretching gently until the sandwich is covered all around.
Tip: Less is more when it comes to cutting a circle of fondant. It’s tempting to cut out a larger circle, but remember the fondant stretches and you don’t want to be left with too much.
Decorate
Once you wrap all of the Nilla sandwiches it’s time to decorate! We used different colors to create hearts, bows, and “wrapping” to go along with the Valentine’s theme. We also used decorative sugar beads.
Pudding Cocktails
This treat is super simple. To create the pudding, we made instant vanilla pudding and added some food coloring to make it red.
Tip: It’s hard to get red using typical food coloring. We used the red, but it looked neon. To add some depth, we took a bit of red into a small bowl, added a drop of blue food coloring, mixed it, dipped our spoon in the purple-ish pudding and mixed it in until we found the color we wanted.
We then made a basic whipped cream with whipping cream, sugar and vanilla.
We put the vanilla and whipped cream in separate plastic bags. We cut off the edge of the bag and used them to get the pudding and whipped cream in the glasses.
We felt the cocktails needed some spicing up, so we added some red to the food coloring to make pink for a heart embellishment!
DIY Heart Banner
We used some of our favorite Paper Source paper for the hearts. Next, we folded the paper accordion style and drew a half heart on the last accordion fold. Just make sure you don’t draw the entire edge of the heart to ensure that the sides of the hearts connect. We then added ribbon to the sides and it was ready to hang!
The Finished Products
