Valentine's Day Recipes

Tell your sweeties, "You're my jam!" in a way that'll turn them into jelly. Simply roll butter-cookie dough into balls, and press the handle end of a spoon into each twice to make a V that expands as it bakes (genius!). Then sprinkle with sanding sugar, fill the indentations with warmed preserves, and give your heart away again and again.

Like in the classic cocktail pink gin, Angostura bitters give this drink its lovely blush hue. A splash of vermouth takes it into martini territory, and the addition of kirsch, a clear brandy distilled from cherries and their pits, delivers an unexpected twist.

For a romantic Valentine's Day dinner or a cozy date night in, serve a pot of this rich, gooey mix of Gruyere and fontina. It's the perfect partner for all kinds of dippers: roasted potatoes, bread cubes and sticks, fennel, apple, salami, you name it.

In this irresistible Valentine's Day dessert, half the batch is decorated with chocolate hearts stamped out of the cupcakes with a cookie cutter, while the other half is topped with vanilla frosting hearts.

Serve up a sweet breakfast by spelling out your feelings on cinnamon-sugar toast. Parchment paper and a pair of scissors are all you need to make the easy stencils.

Homemade comfort food prepared with love, like these classic chicken potpies, can inspire as much romance as any four-star restaurant meal on Valentine's Day. Want to feed the whole family? Just double the recipe.

Chocolate lovers will adore this dessert. The edges and top develop a delicately crisp crust while the center remains moist and fudgy.

There's something extra-special about an individually sized dessert -- especially when it's a molten chocolate cake served warm out of the oven. You can prepare these rich chocolate pudding cakes up to a day ahead and refrigerate them, then just pop them in the oven when you sit down to dinner. They'll be done by the time you're ready for dessert. And they reheat easily, so you can have two one night and two the next. This recipe appears in our cookbook "Martha Stewart's Newlywed Kitchen" (Clarkson Potter).

This ganache recipe (which can easily be multiplied) is the base for Apricot and Ganache Tartlets, Chocolate Cakes with Ganache Glaze, Mini Chocolate Whoopie Pies, Chocolate Cupcakes with Whipped Ganache, and Peanut Butter Truffles. For step-by-step photos, see our handy 101.

Finely chopped lemon mixed with grainy mustard, sugar, and olive oil makes a stellar dressing for this radicchio-and-mint salad.

In this marvelous make-ahead dessert for two, airy chocolate mousse is layered with crushed store-bought spice cookies and topped with generous dollops of whipped cream.

This chocolate-centric creme brulee retains the creaminess and caramelized-sugar topping of the classic version. Though caramel and chocolate are considered sweets, the real secret to their allure is an undercurrent of bitterness, a natural component of cacao and burned sugar.