Strawberry Glazed Cashews

MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY YOU GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!

By that I of course mean, "Oh look, it's Valentine's Day, so that means I have an excuse to make sweet treats for my friends. I mean my co-workers. Oh hell they're all the same people."

There are currently 23 other baristas employed at my sweet little Starbucks, and because each one of them is a precious soul who I never ever gossip about or get frustrated with, I wanted to make each person feel special and loved on this day of days. This glorious holiday that we look forward to each year. So I bought some Power Rangers valentines and decided to seal the deal with these goodie bags filled with dark chocolate and strawberry glazed cashews.

These are relatively simple, provided you have the patience for them to dry. Here's what you'll need for a smaller serving of about a dozen:

3 cups cashews (these can be raw/unsalted if you're feeling rather healthy. I think they may come out better if they are. I only could afford the salted kind)

1 cup chopped strawberries

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

First, toast the cashews at 250 for about 20 minutes, then give them a good toss and stick them back in for another 15 minutes. Meanwhile, throw your strawberries in a food processor, and process until pureed. Heat your strawberries in a large pot on medium low, mixing in the sugar and vanilla and stirring every few minutes. Once you're sure the cashews are well toasted, stir them into the strawberry mix. 

Heat these juts a few minutes. More competent cooks will take this opportunity to rant about candy thermometers and the importance of maintaining a controlled temperature, but as you might guess, I have no clue as to these sorts of things. Just eyeball it, you know? Until everything is heated and sticky and goopy and delicious-looking.

Then remove these from heat and stick them back in the oven at 350 for about a half hour. Remove and let cool, for like, a while. I threw mine on parchment paper, and spread them out evenly so that each cashew has a little space to chill. If there are spaces and clumps that are too gloopy, get rid of some of that strawberry gloop. This will make them really hard to cool.

I let mine cool for a day, but I'm sure there's a better way to do this. Dehydrator? Living in Tempe, Arizona? Hair dryer? Different recipe? No clue. 

So happy Valentine's Day to all! I leave you with a love poem from one of my favorite writers:

What Love Does

Billy Collins

A fine thing, or so it sounds

on the radio in the summer

with all the windows rolled down.

Yet it pierces not only the heart

but the eyeball and the scrotum

and the little target of the nipple with arrows.

It turns everything into a symbol

like a storm that breaks loose

in the final chapter of a long novel.

And it may add sparkle to a morning,

or deepen a night

when the bed is ringed with fire.

It teaches you new joys 

and new maneuvers --

the takedown, the reversal, the escape.

But mostly it comes and goes,

a bee visiting the center

of one flower, then another.

Even as the ink is drying

on her name, it is off

to visit someone in another city,

a city with two steeples,

rows of brick chimney pots,

and a school with a tree-lined entrance.

It will travel through the night to get there,

and it will arrive like an archangel

through an iron gate no one ever seemed to notice before.

<3