Sweet treats for Valentines

Late last night I got into the Valentine spirit and decided to make some goodies up for my friends. I remembered that I cut and pasted a pattern for a neat little container into my idea file (a sketchbook where I jot notes and tape clippets of things that inspire me) so I got to it with my scrapbook supplies. The container pattern is basically a french fry box that can be cut out of one 12x12 sheet of double sided paper, or you can do what I had to do and use smaller sheets of single sided paper and glue them back to back so the pattern is on both sides. They turned out well with the exception of the rounded bottom thing. I couldn't figure out how to crease the bottom so the container stands up by itself because the double-thickness of paper caused the container to be extra stiff and sturdy. I filled them with chocolates and homeade Poor Man's Turtles.

For a pattern you can get a two-fer at McDonalds (Fries AND the box they come in to make a pattern of) or reference Barb Clevenger's french fry box pattern from the Aug/Sep 2006 of Paper Trends magazine, pages 110-111.

Now to the really good part...Poor Man's Turtles. I've made these several times and people go crazy for them. They are super simple to make. In fact the biggest hassle of making them is unwrapping the Rolos.

You'll need:

1 Bag Rolos chocolate and caramel candies (*There were 58 Rolos in my bag in case you need to know how many turtles one bag will make)

1 Bag pecan or walnut halves

1 Bag small pretzels

Cookie sheet or baking dish

Oven set to 350 degrees

Here's the how to:

1. Unwrap Rolos.

2. Place pretzels on baking sheet and put one Rolo in the center of each pretzel. Put in oven for 4 minutes at 350 degrees. Rolos should be soft, not melted.

3. Take out of oven and press one pecan half in the center of each Rolo. Rolo will squish down into pretzel a bit.

4. Let them cool and pop off the baking sheet by prying up the pretzel (don't use the pecan to pull on as they have a tendency to break).

Voila! Enjoy!