Hello, February! The month of love ❤️ Whether you love it or love to hate it, February presents an opportunity to show some love to those around you, be it your longtime ride-or-die, your kids, or your best group of pals just trying to make it through the shortest month of the year. Around here, we show that love through food, specifically through delicious, thoughtfully made food that doesn’t require a ton of extra effort. We’ve pulled together a Treat Yo’self Valentine’s Day Menu for 2 that’s equal parts indulgent and healthy, a combo we want to indulge in more often this year. Higher in fiber and loaded with more love and light than your typical store bought chocolate covered confections, try just one or all four courses of these gut-healthy and heart-happy Valentine’s treats.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Enjoy :)

Kale Caesar Salad with Homemade Croutons

Start your night off with the satisfying crunch of homemade croutons flecked with garlic and parsley atop a fresh bed of creamy caesar and kale salad for a healthy, green side. Using the Flourish baguette recipe as the base for these crispy, crunchy croutons, these satisfying salad toppers are full of flavor from the fresh cloves of garlic, olive oil, and Italian parsley they’re tossed and coated in before they’re cooled down and ready to serve. The rest of the caesar comes together quickly once the homemade dressing is assembled and blended in a food processor. The creamy grated Parmigiano cheese, zesty lemon and bite of Dijon mustard combine for that signature caesar taste. Grab a chilled bowl and dig in!

Sweet Toast 

Enjoy the soft, slightly sweet taste of fresh artisan bread topped with a rich ricotta spread, ground cinnamon, and thinly sliced pear for a delicious sweet toast. Sweet, but not too sweet, this homemade challah sweet toast is an impressive, yet totally doable, at-home bread to bake. As with any bread, there’s a fair amount of time involved for the bread to rise and proof, so plan accordingly. The mild ricotta cheese spread topping adds a creamy finish to this fluffy sweet bread, making way for the sweet, buttery (or tangy, depending on the type!) pears sliced thin on top to round out a satisfying bite. Hit the finished product with a dash of cinnamon for added flair and an element of earthiness to balance out the rest of the sweetness. 

Beef Wellington

This impressive, savory Beef Wellington is a traditional holiday favorite, festive enough for a feast, and tender enough to say, “I love you.” A classic dish dating back hundreds of years, the heart of this recipe is a nice, juicy center-cut beef tenderloin, prepped and tied together for uniform cooking and maximum juiciness. With layers upon layers of flavors, you’ll take your dinner guests on a flavor voyage beginning with the sweet puff pastry exterior, through the savory mushroom crumble and onwards into the juicy, melt-in-your-mouth beef center that hits your palette like a warm embrace. Anywhere the recipe calls for flour, including the puff pastry, which does involve a fair amount of folding and laminating of the dough, swapping in Flourish high-fiber flour is an easy way to sneak in a little fiber with a lot of taste. When Wellington is on the menu, you know you’re in for a treat. Enjoy the ride!

Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie 

Rich, decadent, humongous and brimming with chocolate chips, this deep dish cookie recipe produces one large shareable chocolate chip cookie baked in a cast iron skillet. Add a glass of milk and a few scoops of your favorite vanilla bean ice cream to complete this utterly delicious cookie-powered dessert. If you’re a fan of one-pot dinners, then this one-skillet dessert is right up your alley. Consider this the upscale and altogether more satisfying and reliably tasty version of those “cookie in a cup” microwave recipes that were all the rage a few years ago. There’s no additional bowls, mixers, or baking sheets involved here; all the ingredients get dumped straight into a trusty seasoned cast iron skillet. While the oven’s heating up, you’ll melt your butter in the skillet and slowly add the rest of the classic ingredients for this deep dish cookie, all the way up to the chocolate chips. When the ingredients are all combined, the oven should be just about to temperature and then the whole skillet goes into the oven. How efficient! The result is a single, ooey gooey, warm, still-soft-in-the-middle chocolate chip cookie just waiting to be divvied up and devoured. 

These goodies are homemade and taste delicious. With the right flour, the fiber content is sky high and better for healthy families. The experience of cooking together or for one another is intentional and bonding. What’s not to love? At Flourish, we want you to indulge in the sweetest moments this life has to offer with the people you love most. If a sneaky little flour can facilitate such moments, then we’ll keep making it so you can keep baking it. 

All our love,

Flourish Flour