Healthy Cute Valentine’s Breakfast Recipe

Whether you have a special someone, children who love cute food, or just want to treat yourself this Valentine’s Day, these muffins are the perfect breakfast treat.  I noticed that most of the Valentine’s Day breakfast recipes out there were typically sugary and full of empty carbohydrates.  These past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about how cooking is truly an act of love.  I’ve pondered the reasons I cook for the people in my life, and realized that it’s to make them feel loved, bring them joy, and to comfort them.

My conclusion then is that if I really care about them, I should feed them with healthful food made with whole ingredients that will nourish their bodies.  But I also don’t want them to feel deprived, or even worse, think that healthy food is being forced upon them.  That’s where the idea for this adorable muffin recipe came from.  Beautiful chewy muffins made with whole wheat, cranberry applesauce and organic sucanat.  Full of flavor, health, and love.I’m always searching for Valentine’s Day recipes, and especially recipes for kids to use in cooking classes.  After making this batch of muffins, I decided to bring them to the house of some special friends we were visiting that evening.  They have three children ages 2, 4 and 6.

The two year old, their only boy, was SO excited we were having pizza for dinner.  We actually hadn’t seen him since he was an infant so were excited to watch his personality.  The first thing he said when we introduced ourselves was, “We’re having PIZZA for dinner!”

Over the next five minutes (while our friend got things ready for dinner), we chatted with the two girls about how we knew them and fun things we did with them when they were younger, and grinned at the boy’s addicting excitement over pizza.

When we sat down in the dining room for dinner, our friend put a dainty heart shaped muffin on each plate of cut up pizza.  They oohed and ahhed over the cuteness of the little muffins.  The girls regaled us with stories of hummingbirds and kitties.  Then we noticed the two year old was missing from the table!

His mother called his name and his muffled voice called from the kitchen “I’m coming mom! I’m getting more hearts!”

He toddled into the dining room with four more heart muffins cradled lovingly in his arms.  We all laughed and I went to move the basket of muffins to a counter space he couldn’t reach while standing on a chair.  Although I felt bad that he never touched his pizza that night, my heart felt warm and snuggly because this little bo,y with his big eyes and arms that love to cuddle, perfectly understood the love behind those muffins.

I got the cute heart shaped silicone baking cups at a Valentine sale.  They’re a little tough to clean (dishwasher safe but I haven’t figured out how to keep them from falling through).  I kind of like that you can’t really tell from the top that they’re hearts, so when you turn them over it’s a surprise.  If you decide to get some, know that you shouldn’t keep the muffins or cupcakes in them for more than an hour or they’ll get soggy and/or be tough to remove.  See, I go through these learning experiences so you guys don’t have to!

By the way, I’m using Pinterest to keep track of fun Valentine’s recipes I find.  If you haven’t tried Pinterest yet, it’s a great visual bookmarking site.  But I give you fair warning that it’s rather addicting!