HAPPY "VALENTINE’S DAY" to my MAMA and my PAPA (and a very happy birthday to my mama this week too and who still looks fabulous) !

In your lifetime, you will end up with several “valentine’s day” candidates (I remember that as a kid in elementary school, we would all make hand-made cards in class and give them to everybody because everybody was our “valentine” in those years of pre-adolescent innocence . . .)

Whatever life offers you and presents you with, your parents will always be your 1^st & forever 'valentines' so always remember that and if there’s anybody in the world who deserves chocolate hearts every year, it’s very probably them.

I wanted to dedicate this post exclusively to my parents but inevitably and at our age, LIFE HAPPENS and on a sadder note, I am conscious that one day our parents and 1^st valentines will inevitably leave us behind and even though LOVE is JOY and it is ETERNAL, it will also be tinged with SADNESS one day.

*This is why I’d like to take a moment to present my sincerest condolences to : the ARGIRIOU family in Canada for the passing of Kostas Argiriou last week (loving father to Sophie, Tony and Olga and husband to Aspasia). Uncle Kosta was, of course their dearest 1^st valentine too. May you rest in peace ...

And back to the blog that is supposed to be about cooking and recipes :

You all know how I love using this weird and easily-shaped thing called kadaifi dough which is a shredded angel-hair like version of filo dough used to make desserts in Greek as well as Middle Eastern and Balkan cuisine.

This cookie recipe is a combination of these dough filaments, coated with sugar and butter and grated soft caramels (which you know is made with sugar and butter and also cream) and then filled with rose-water scented candied cherries and finally coated with (and not dipped in) melted dark chocolate on one side or both sides (which is even better).

What you end up with are these rather childish and funny-looking hand-made crispy crumbly chocolate cherry caramel heart-shaped cookies, as if we had made them when we were in elementary school again, travelling back in time when we were under 10 years old and our parents were still in the their early thirties  !

There is a longer and more time-consuming and more precise method to make these cookies look perfectly layered and sandwiched by first creating 32 flat chocolate heart-shaped disks using the same silicone mold and then sandwiching the 16 warm cookies in between the cooled chocolate hearts to bind them, but this wasn’t my objective here (unless I planned to officially offer them) … I get more and more nostalgic with age and sometimes I like acting and cooking like a ‘kid’ again !

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY to all … and like KOJAK (aka Telly Savalas) used to say : “Who loves ya baby ?”

p.s.: this photo (my favorite), which some of you are familiar with from seeing it on the social networks, is from the late 80’s in Montreal, when my mom was in her mid- thirties and dad was in his forties … :)