I LOVE Chocolate! A Valentine's Tasting Party

I love Valentine’s Day! It’s such a wonderful day to remind those around you that you care. Now we all know that it’s a day that is primarily focused on love for your significant other, but there are so many more types of love out there than that. Love for your kids, love for your friends, love for your pets, love for your family, and so on. Of course the Hubs and I do the Valentine’s Day romance thing with dinner and flowers and all of that, but this year, I wanted to show my dear friends some love on this special day, so I decided to host a Valentine’s themed chocolate tasting party.

Some of you may be wondering what exactly a tasting party is. A tasting party is a get-together that is focused on one type of food or drink. Ever been to a wine tasting? Well it’s sort of like that. Some other examples might include having all Mediterranean fare, or different types of margaritas, only at a tasting party, you have just a small, appetizer sized amount, just enough to taste the flavors. I really enjoy tasting parties, mostly because I’m such a huge fan of appetizers but give tasting parties a try, I promise you’ll be hooked!

 I started off the planning for my choco-stravaganza by purchasing a few different good quality chocolate bars (I don’t recall the exact brands but there was a milk chocolate bar, a bar that contained 70 % cocoa, a bar that contained 85% cocoa, an organic white chocolate and strawberries bar, and an organic dark chocolate and orange bar, you get the idea, anyway). These were my “tasting” chocolates.   I also put together a menu of a variety of small, bite-sized eats, all containing…you guessed it... chocolate!.. in one form or another.  I chose the following for my pint-sized smorgasbord:

 

 Raspberry Filled Chocolate Crepes

Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse

White Chocolate Crème with Roasted Blueberries

Brownie “Love” Bites

Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Shortcake Trifles

Chocolate Cheesecake Bites

Chocolate Éclairs

 

You can find some of these recipes on our Pinterest page. I thought the Brownie “Love” Bites were super cute and they were so easy to make. I simply took a boxed brownie mix and made it according to the instructions in a 13x9 pan. After they were baked and cooled, I took an extra small heart cookie cutter and cut the brownie bites out, then arranged them on my serving platter. They were a big hit with minimal effort!

 **TIP** When doing a party that requires multiple dishes it helps a lot if you can choose recipes that can be made a day ahead or that need long periods of refrigeration time. That way, you won’t be trying to prepare and cook several dishes at the same time, saving you boatloads of stress!

 I also had a chocolate fountain set up with some pineapple, blueberries, strawberries, pretzel rods, and marshmallows for dipping. And for drinks, I kept it simple with a selection of red and white wine, water, and tea, and also offered tastes of Choco Vine’s Whipped Cream Wine.
 

For decoration, I stuck with the traditional hearts and love Valentine’s theme (I made most of my decorations, but store-bought works just as well). I tried to not go too over the top with my decorations, sticking mainly to the areas where food or drinks were displayed. I also looked up a few factoids about chocolate on the good ol’ internets, typed them up in a pretty font and scattered them around the house. As for favors, each of my guests received a wine charm for their glass, that I handmade for them.

 

Once my guests arrived, we enjoyed the fruits of my labor and each other’s company. We sampled the different “tasting” chocolates, and compared the varied flavors from one bar to the next. I know that some people like to have paper available so that their guests can take notes on each bar, but I felt like that would be more for a larger number of samples than what I had.

 

I am so glad that I did this party. The company was awesome, the food turned out great, and it gave me a chance to let my friends know how wonderful they are on the holiday of love.
 

 

See you again soon!

 Kellie