A Valentine's Gift to Me.

Through all the years of boyfriends and dates and single times, I only remember two Valentine's Days. The first was with my ex-long-term-live-in-bf who surprised me by pretending to leave for work, then knocking on the back door shortly after. I scurried out of bed and threw on something decent to find him standing at the door with roses and a gift. The gift was the anniversary special edition DVD of The Sound of Music. My absolute favorite movie of all time (his absolute least favorite). That was the best.

The second was this guy I was dating brought me dinner that he had made and we stayed in and ate dinner then watched a movie. The dinner was delicious, but he brought two bottles of champagne... and proceeded to drink both of them. Then he brings out the movie he picked... What Dreams May Come. Have you seen it? If you have, you understand why this was the cherry on top of the worst Valentine's Day of my life. I already had this movie in my collection but he didn't know that. He apparently didn't read the cover while he was at Blockbuster either because he didn't realize that this movie is about DEATH and that it's horribly sad. He cried. And then passed out.

This year I spent Valentine's Day renewing my Match.com subscription. I've used this site many times and sadly, most of the guys I'm matched up with this time are the same guys I've been matched up with for years. Maybe this time I'll get to meet some of them. I've had good and bad experiences with online dating, but I've been avoiding dating for too long so I decided, what the hell. Why not give it another go? So, we'll see what happens.

Now, about that pretty little thing up there at the top of this post. Oh yeah, that's a chocolate cake. I know, I know, here I go again eating sugar, right?! Well I decided that since I've been SO good about NOT eating sugar, and am feeling absolutely wonderful right now, a little Valentine's Day treat was in order. I didn't want to make a whole cake or anything, because then I'd eat it all and feel like crap. Plus I've been hitting the gym hard and I don't even have the desire to ruin all my efforts. I've read on a few blogs lately that people are baking cakes in the microwave for a quick fix. I jumped over to allrecipes.com and found what I was looking for right away. I used this recipe and substituted the flour with Better Batter, the milk with Almond Breeze and the butter with Earth Balance. I also didn't have any white sugar so I used light brown. Since the recipe serves two, I used two ramekins and split the batter between the two. It worked out perfectly! I whipped up a small batch of chocolate buttercream frosting to top the cakes. So very delicious. The perfect treat. And in case you're wondering, I did eat one and a half cakes. Which is good because a while ago I would've just polished off both of them!

To the lovers and the haters of Valentine's Day, I hope today was great either way!!