Coffee Break

It’s official - Valentine’s Day is just one week away. That means that if you’re planning on getting a Valentine for your coffee loving sweetheart, you should be looking NOW. I’m going to make it easy for you to find the perfect coffee lovers Valentines by posting a Coffee Luv’n post every single day between now and next Friday. The best part of it? I promise that not one single Coffee Luv’n Valentine suggestion will cost more than $20 - and lots of them will cost a lot less.

Today’s Suggestion: Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans

Don’t give your coffee loving sweetheart just any old chocolates for Valentine’s day. They’ll LOVE chocolate covered espresso beans - decadent dark chocolate surrounding crunchy espresso roast coffee beans. You can find these at almost any gourmet coffee shop for about $8 a pound - or you can order up a pound of fresh roasted coffee from your favorite online coffee roast and do the chocolate dipping yourself. If you DIY your chocolate covered espresso beans, you can pick your favorite kind of coffee AND the chocolate. My fave flavor is Ethiopian Yrgacheffe beans with semi-sweet dark chocolate coating. It’s really easy to do, too -

Use semi-sweet dark chocolate chips.

Melt them in the top of a double boiler, being very careful not to get any water or steam into the chocolate

Spread the melted chocolate out on a warmed marble slab or cookie tin

Spread the espresso beans over the chocolate in a single layer, turning them with a fork or spoon to coat them completely

Lift each espresso bean out of the chocolate with a fork and place it on a foil covered cookie sheet to let the chocolate harden - you can put them in the fridge to speed this up!

Package the chocolate covered espresso beans in pink or red plastic wrap, tie up with a red and white heart-sprinkled bow and tuck the whole thing into a pretty Valentine coffee mug!

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