$12 to a Lot o' Valentine-y Deliciousness

Who’s ridiculously full right now? This girl.

But, for a (particularly) good reason. I scoped out a fun Valentine’s Day food treat!

Last week, I saw on Facebook that Sweets Bakeshop (delicious macarons and cupcakes, now open in both Mpls and St. Paul) is doing special Valentine’s Day packages this weekend. The cute little $12 one caught my eye. I thought it would be a fun dessert to bring home for V-Day. 

4 macarons (flavors: Raspberry Truffle, Praline, Rose, Chile Pepper)

3 mini cupcakes (flavors: Chocolate Raspberry, Hibiscus Macadamia, Raspberry Milkshake)

1 brownie

Cute, no?

The nice gals at Sweets gave me a sneak peak and loaded me up today with an assortment of today’s special flavors plus one of the flavors for the V-Day packages. I tried each one tonight (after eating a hearty portion of Carbonara). Hence, why I feel slightly ill now. But worth it. As always.

Their cupcakes are really delicious (worlds apart from the other bakeries in town), but I love their macarons best. It’s the French in me. It used to be that you could only get macarons in Paris, but not anymore! Tonight I had bites of the Salted Caramel, Lavender, and Chocolate flavors. Yum. Airy and light at first bite, and then dense and chewy as you get into the gooey filling in the middle. The Salted Caramel one has my heart. Not only for its taste, but for its pretty turquoise color.

We actually gave boxes of these macarons to our out of town wedding guests last summer.

(Side story: after tons of deliberation and brainstorming, I had decided last summer that for our out of town guests, we’d leave them little wooden crates of delicious foods to enjoy while they stayed in their hotels. I had seen a picture…perfect little crates full of artisanal crackers, cheese, freshly picked apples, salami. It was totally up my food alley. But the logistics of it all for a wedding weekend when everyone arrived at different times, not so much. So, somehow this idea morphed into a trunk FULL of Minnesota foods and (what my mom has since lovingly deemed) ugly reusable Whole Foods grocery bags that we were going to load all of this MN food into. We hauled it all back to my house. Deep down I wasn’t feeling great about it. And then I saw a new picture. Of perfect little macarons nestled into a simple white box. So, the next day, I returned 20 bags of Kettle Corn (made in MN), 20 ugly reusable grocery bags, and god knows what else. And called Sweets Bakeshop.)

Back to tonight. As for the SIX cupcakes they sent me home with, I loved the Thyme Honey Walnut one! Some bites were thyme-y, some were honey-y, and some were nutty. Delicious. And smart. Also tried the Dreamsicle (yep, tastes just like one in a fresher way), Spicy Chocolate (surprisingly worked despite my bias against spicy mixed with sweet), Salted Caramel (yum), and Chocolate Raspberry (one of the V-Day flavors and Zach’s favorite tonight).

A perfect little smorgasbord of Valentine-y goodness. Place your order, lovies!