Valentine's Day Recipes: How to Make Your Favorite Foods Red or Pink

How do you make your foods and drinks red or pink in celebration of Valentine's Day? The obvious answer here is to use food coloring, but there are plenty more ways to get creative.

For a romantic Valentine's Day meal, try this Chicken in Champagne and Mushroom Sauce recipe that I found. Below I will list the ingredients, but for the remainder of the recipe, you'll have to navigate on over to the website that I found it on. The link is included with this article.

· 1/4 cup (50 mL) all purpose flour

· 1/2 tsp. (2 mL) salt

· 1/4 tsp. (1 mL) black pepper

· 2 tbsp. (30 mL) olive oil

· 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 6 oz/170 g each)

· 1 tbsp. (15 mL) butter

· 3 cups (750 mL) sliced mushrooms

· 1 cup (250 mL) champagne (or other sparkling white wine)

· 1 cup (250 mL) whipping cream

To add a colorful touch to the sauce, color the whipping cream.

For a decadent desert, instead of milk chocolate covered strawberries, use white chocolate with a dab of red food coloring to make a pink chocolate.

You can also make a heart shaped red velvet cake, without having a heart shaped pan. Just pick up a cake mix, bake according to the directions, and follow these instructions. Be sure you have enough cake batter for a two layer cake, though. You need to make sure you have a square pan, and a round pan. Bake half the batter in each pan. Let each cake cool. Turn the square cake to the side to create a diamond shape. Cut the round cake in half, and place a half on each top side of the diamond to create your one layer heart cake. All you have to do is use the frosting to cover the seams.

You can decorate it with pink and red candies like m&m's, or color the cream cheese icing. There's also a peppermint pie that comes to mind when I think of pink and red. It's one of Paula Deen's recipes, and looks very yummy.

For a nice decoration, use red, pink, and white candles--steer away from the traditional red rose by using white, pink, or even fire and ice roses.

If you want to be even more creative, try using flavored syrups to get your color instead of plain food coloring. Strawberry syrup will color your milk or cookie dough, while adding a wonderful flavor. You could use cherry if you don't like strawberry.

You could use coloring to make your clear sodas pink, or even use Cherry 7-up for floats. There are tons of ways to jazz up your food; you just have to be imaginative.