Happy Valentine's Day!

by Shanna Hatfield

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope this day brings you a heart full of love and plenty of sweet surprises.

Speaking of sweet surprises, I thought I'd share the recipe for a dessert that isn't hard to make, but always looks quite fancy (and tastes good, too!). 

Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert that you can make in any number of shapes, including a heart.

Australian and New Zealand both claim to have created the dessert. Recent research has even pointed to the origin coming from the U.S., based off a German Torte. Regardless of where it originated, the sweet,  soft-centered dessert is named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova who was quite popular in the 1920s. 

Pavlova origins can be found in European meringues that were invited back in the early 1700s.

A Swiss pastry-cook, Gasparini, is credited with inviting the a small meringue dessert. 

Larger meringue cakes are thought to have been an 19th century development which eventually led to pavlova. 

Raspberry Pavlova

2 egg whites

pinch of salt

1/2 cup plus one tbsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. corn starch

1 tsp. white vinegar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Berries

Whipped Cream

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Beat egg whites and salt in a metal bowl on medium speed until soft peaks form.

Gently sprinkle the sugar into the egg whites, one tablespoon at a time. The mixture should now be glossy  stiff peaks.

Gently fold in the cornstarch, vinegar and vanilla.

Line a baking sheet with parchment and use a spoon to shape the meringue into a heart (or circle). Make sure the edges are higher than the middle.

Turn the oven down to 250 degrees and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The meringue should be very pale. Turn off the oven and let the meringue cool completely.

Just before serving, remove the meringue from the oven and top with whipped cream and berries.

Serve and enjoy!

A hopeless romantic with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure, Shanna Hatfield is a USA Today bestselling author of sweet romantic fiction written with a healthy dose of humor. In addition to blogging and eating too much chocolate, she is completely smitten with her husband, lovingly known as Captain Cavedweller.

Shanna creates character-driven romances with realistic heroes and heroines. Her historical westerns have been described as “reminiscent of the era captured by Bonanza and The Virginian” while her contemporary works have been called “laugh-out-loud funny, and a little heart-pumping sexy without being explicit in any way.”

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Wedding Anniversaries are Special

Happy Valentine's Day! A romance writer's favorite day!

Today is the perfect day to talk about weddings and anniversaries.

The practice of celebrating milestone wedding anniversaries, such as the twenty-fifth and fiftieth, started long ago. Research shows that these special anniversaries were marked as early as the middle ages.

Many of the wedding and anniversary traditions we see today started in the Victorian era. Queen Victoria started the tradition of brides wearing white. Most brides wore their best dress for their wedding day no matter what color it was. After Queen Victoria’s wedding, white wedding dresses became more popular and brides would try to wear white if they could.

Queen Victoria’s daughter had the Bridal March played for her to walk down the aisle at her wedding. When there was music at weddings after that, this song was played when possible. This song is the one most associated with a wedding song today.

Giving gifts to mark a wedding anniversary became more common in the eighteenth century, mostly in Europe. The bride was normally given a silver colored wreath for a twenty-fifth anniversary. If the couple made it fifty years, a gold colored wreath would be the gift to the bride.

The gifts were meant to celebrate the commitment it takes to make a marriage last. A marriage built on love went against some of the traditions of arranged marriages or marriages based on purpose or need. Marking milestone years became important as people started to marry for love.

And finally, by the 1860’s the symbols for each anniversary started to evolve. The Farmer’s Almanac designated the first anniversary as the paper anniversary in 1859.

In my latest Cutter’s Creek story released just two weeks ago, Janine and Thad Hewitt have an anniversary coming up. It’s not a milestone year, but Thad feels the need to surprise his wife with something special. He’s sure his plans will please her and bring her out of the doldrums she’s experienced over the past few months.

The romance these two share was sweet to me because it reminded me of how our lives are today. We’re busy. We’re distracted. We’re not always focused on the romance in our own marriages. But the romance can be rekindled. It just takes a little effort and an open mind. And maybe a touch of creativity.

If you’d like to find out how Thad brought the romance back into his marriage, find Committed on Amazon.

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Annie Boone writes sweet western historical romance with a happy ending guaranteed in every single story. Inspiration comes in many forms and Annie finds more than one way to make her stories entertain and inspire.

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