Holiday Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

Amy Tsuruta, THE original and most passionate Coffee Lover!!, thought it might be fun to have a Holiday Coffee Lovers Blog Hop - and I happened to get invited to join in with her along with several hundred others (ok, maybe not that many - but there are A LOT of people participating!) 

Luckily I recently purchased a really cute coffee theme stamp set from Art Impressions appropriately called Cathy Caffeine!  I colored her with Copics and cut her out with a stitched mat die.  I ripped the top layer off a panel of recycled cardboard to expose the corrugation and used it for the background.

And I just had to stamp a splatter over the sentiment - we coffee lovers always spill don't we??  The odds are much greater that we will since we always have a cup in our hands or on our desk right??!  I also scattered some brown and tan sequins around my card.

So we are all linking up our coffee lovers creations over at Amy's blog today -  lots of people are posting blog candy so you might want to check it out! 

  

Instead of 'candy' I am sharing a recipe for Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans -  as I decided to make some this year for holiday gift giving.

Since I haven't made them before (!) I googled - Recipe Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans - and a plethora of them showed up -  I printed out a few different ones - they are pretty much the same - with a few added hints or slightly different ingredients here and there -  so I just took what looked good to me and tried it out -  here's the recipe I ended up with:

Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans Recipe

3/4 cups Dark Chocolate Nestle Toll House Morsels
1 cup whole espresso beans 
(I used  Starbucks Espresso Roast whole bean that I found in our local supermarket)
2/3 cup Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa

1. Using a double boiler melt the chocolate morsels over boiling water.  When smooth - remove from heat and stir in the espresso beans.

2. Put the cocoa in a small bowl.  Drop a couple of spoonfuls of the chocolate covered beans into the cocoa powder and mix with a fork - lightly separating any beans that are stuck together. (a lot of them do!)

3. Place a mesh strainer over another small bowl and pour the beans with the cocoa on them into the strainer.  Shake the strainer so just the covered beans remain in the strainer.

4. Spread the covered beans onto wax paper to cool.

5.  Continue steps 2 - 4 until all the beans are done -  adding additional cocoa to the bowl as needed.

Allow the beans to cool and package them up!

Now - I have to say - they aren't as chocolatey tasting as the ones you purchase -  there's a lot more chocolate around the bean on the store bought ones -  so you taste more of the coffee bean with these.  But I think any coffee lover will love 'um!

I put the beans in a clear bag - and will make labels for them before gifting!

Now, let's all grab a 'cuppa' and check out all the other coffee lover cards linked up over at Amy's blog!

Stamps:  Splat That - Waltzingmouse, Cathy Caffeine Set - Art Impressions
Paper:  White - PTI, piece of repurposed cardboard from a box.
Ink:  Archival Jet Black, Grout Grey - Color Box/MFT
Accessories:  Stitched Mat Rectangle Dies - Lil Inker Designs, Glue n Seal - Ranger, Copics - E00, E07, E35, E37, E44, B05, B21, R02, R05, Chocolate Sundae Sequins - My Craft Spot.