Valentines Pumpkin Chocolate Muffins and Raspberry Chocolate Muffin Trifle

For Valentine's Day, I made the hub some chocolate muffins with a tag, "Good morning, Stud Muffin! I love you." for breakfast.

That is one of the nice things about Valentine's Day, no matter how tacky and cheesy you get, it is okay.

And cheesy it was, too. I also made pork burritos with lots of cheese for supper because they are his favorite. Go ahead, I know you are thinking it. Go ahead, call me sentimental. Yeah. Well, neither one of us really is much, except for Valentine's Day. And then it's only me. So I will get on with the post.

Here are the Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins for the Hub's Valentine breakfast.

These are delicious and ever so easy.

Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

1 box chocolate cake mix (if you want to save a few calories, use a sugar free mix)
1 15oz can pureed pumpkin
1 cup (plus a handful extra for the muffin tops) milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 12 medium muffin cups or 6 large muffin cups (or line with paper).

Mix the pumpkin and the cake mix together. (Really: no eggs, no water, no oil.) Stir in the chips. Scoop into greased (or paper lined) muffin cups to 3/4 full. Drop five remaining chips on top of each muffin.

Bake for 15 minutes for medium tins (20 minutes for large tins) and check to see if they are set in the middle with a toothpick. Add more time as necessary until a toothpick comes out clean. The wetness of the mix really depends on the pumpkin you use, and wetter batter takes more time.

Remove when just firmed up and remove from the muffin tins after 5 minutes to finish cooling on a rack. Done. And they are sort of healthy. Sort of.

Here it is mixed up. Who would have thought it would mix?

Here are the muffins ready for the oven

 Now what do you do with the leftover muffins? Use them for dessert on Valentines night, of course!

Sweet dessert for Valentine's

These glasses are a reminder of our wedding night. When we got to our motel after all the festivities we found the light on the phone flashing that we had a message. The hub went down to the hotel office to see what was up and came back with a grin and a package. He had me open the package which was from my two sisters - matching red, wool, thermal nightshirts - one, size extra-small for me, one, size extra-large for him. How romantic.

But he was still grinning like something was up. He reached into the pockets of his coat and pulled out these two glasses and a bottle of sparkling apple juice that my romantic brother had left at the desk for our celebration. I love these glasses, a lot. See, I am sentimental.

Here is how to make these desserts.

Raspberry Chocolate Muffin Trifle for Two

1 Pumpkin Chocolate Muffin, broken into pieces

8 oz fresh raspberries, washed

For the Trifle sauce:

2 Tablespoons sour cream
2 Tablespoons cream cheese, softened
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Crumble a fourth of the muffin into each of two nice goblets. Then add a tablespoon of sauce to each. Add 8 raspberries on top of the sauce. Repeat. Eat.