It's the loveliest day of the year, and you might be on the lookout for an Instagrammable treat to make for your sweetheart or take to your kid's Valentine's Day party. These Valentine's Day recipes look delicious enough for your Pinterest board and can help bake some extra love into this special day. Flowers and cards might be cute, but nothing says "I love you" like homemade sweets.
I love baking. I'm always on the lookout for easy-to-make treats that fit a holiday theme, and the world wide web has no shortage of them for Valentine's Day. Many of these recipes make individual servings, so they're perfect for parties, and you can also set aside a few for you and your love to enjoy.
Alternatively, a couple of these recipes make an entire cake, so you can show your honey how much they mean to you by baking until your heart just can't bake anymore. There's even a recipe for tasty Valentine's Day–inspired cocktails that are perfect for a Galentine's Day celebration.
No matter which recipe you go with, when you take the time to make something Pinterest-worthy to celebrate Valentine's Day, you can't go wrong.
1Cherry Cheesecake Cupcakes
These cherry cheesecake cupcakes are not your average cupcakes. Made from cream cheese-based cheesecake batter with a juicy cherry pie filling, these bite-sized delights by A Pretty Life In The Suburbs will make your Valentine swoon and are a perfectly gorgeous addition for any romantic table setting. Can't you just picture these precious cupcake bites set up next to rose petals and candlelight?
2Marbled Valentine Sugar Cookies
If you want to impress someone special this Valentine's Day (like the other moms in your kid's kindergarten class, perhaps?) these marbled Valentine sugar cookies by Baked by Rachel are the Pinterest-worthy way to do it. I just love baking something that looks way harder than it actually was. There is literally almost no better way to win the "room mom of the year" award than to show up with a platter full of marbled pink heart cookies that look like they took hours to craft when in reality they took just 15 minutes out of your day.
3Rice Krispie Valentine Lollipops
Pretty much anyone can make crisped rice cereal treats, right? Easy and delicious standard rice cereal treats maybe, but this recipe takes the basic snack and turns it into a Valentine's Day masterpiece on a stick. Not only are they coated in candy and sprinkles but even the insides of these Rice Krispie valentine lollipops by Foodie Crush are dyed red to give you all the Valentine's Day vibes.
4Easy Cherry Vodka Sour
This tasty cherry vodka sour recipe by DIY Candy is a gorgeous drink to celebrate Valentine's Day with. Whether you're gathering with your gals, smooching your sweetheart, or unwinding after a long day of classroom parties with your kids, you're going to want a cocktail in your hand. Whip up a few of these flavorful cocktails with cherry, mint, and blueberries if you want to enjoy an adult beverage on Valentine's Day that's pretty and potent.
5Valentine's Day Cherry Pie
Although the heart-shaped cutouts on the top of this Valentine's Day cherry pie by A Pretty Life In The Suburbs looks complex, it just takes a little patience and time to pull off. The end result looks simply stunning and will impress even your harshest critics (be sure to send your MIL a pic of this one). This particular recipe calls for using a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out pieces of homemade pie crust, because nobody other than Martha Stewart herself could hand-cut enough perfectly symmetrical hearts to cover an entire pie.
6Valentine's Day Snack Mix
This recipe is the lazy mom way to impress your kids on Valentine's Day — a bag full of sugary, salty snacks with sprinkles. Princess Pinky Girl's recipe for Valentine's Day snack mix is delightfully pretty and can be put in a bowl and served to guests at a Valentine's Day party or bagged up into individual servings. This is the simplest hack for busy moms, and it's a total winner that you can make for pretty much any holiday if you just switch out the red and pink accordingly.
7Red Velvet Roll Cake
The presentation of this red velvet roll cake by Brown Eyed Baker makes it look like you mastered a complicated baking technique, but in reality it is a rather simple cake to put together. If you promised your valentine a homemade dessert for your celebration, you literally can't go wrong with this cake — the white chocolate cream cheese filling is the stuff dreams are made of. Plus, this Valentine's Day recipe is definitely one that you can be proud to snap a pic of and post on Instagram.
8Pink Velvet Cupcakes
Red velvet might be the clear front runner in the contest of most traditional Valentine's Day dessert flavor, but it looks to me like pink velvet is making huge strides with a bit of help from this recipe for pink velvet cupcakes by Baked By Rachel. When you add on the whipped cream cheese frosting, pink velvet might just take the lead and win the title of best Valentine's Day dessert flavor. The gorgeous pink hue and light vanilla flavor are sure to impress your sweetheart.
9Strawberry Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake
A bundt cake decorated with chocolate covered strawberries that tastes like a chocolate covered strawberry? Sign me up! That's exactly what you'll get when you make this recipe for strawberry chocolate chip bundt cake by Inside Bru Crew Life this Valentine's Day. Plus, feeding your honey a forkful of homemade bundt cake can be just as sexy as biting into a chocolate covered strawberry if you want it to be.
10Cotton Candy Mocktails
If you want to celebrate Valentine's Day with a pretty drink sans alcohol, this cotton candy mocktail by Princess Pinky Girl is exactly what you need. The fun drink combines pink cotton candy, pink decorating sugar, and strawberry soda in a tall glass to create a gorgeously delicious holiday drink. If you've never made a cotton candy mocktail with your kids, this Valentine's Day is the perfect time to try it out. The look on their face as they watch the cotton candy disappear is priceless. Yes kids, that right — mommy can do magic!
11Red Velvet No-Bake Cheesecake
Cheesecake seems like a pretty difficult thing to make, but with this recipe for red velvet no-bake cheesecake by Jelly Toast Blog, you can impress your loved ones this Valentine's Day without living in the kitchen all day. (Because honestly, you've got way better things to do on Valentine's Day. That cute pink-hearts graphic tee at Target isn't going to buy itself!) Though they're such little effort, you get these gorgeous cups of creamy goodness and a cute post for the 'gram in the end.
12Chocolate Sprinkle Kiss Cookies
This recipe for chocolate sprinkle kiss cookies by Inside Bru Crew Life is a sweet way to celebrate Valentine's Day. The chocolate cookie dough is rolled in red, pink, and white sprinkles before baking. Then, they're topped with a chocolate kiss candy — a sweet little touch that's as delicious as it is cute. Plus, you can't just buy a dozen chocolate kisses. You have to buy a whole bag full, and guess who gets to eat all of the extras? That's right — you deserve it!
13Chocolate Sandwich Cookies With Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting
While strawberry and cherry are the red-colored Valentine's Day flavors of choice, this recipe for chocolate sandwich cookies by Well Plated evokes the sometimes forgotten but always delicious raspberry in its cream cheese filling. Plus, the filling gives these cookies a gorgeous pop of Valentine's Day pink. Hand these pretty cookies out to your kid's classmates, their teachers, your neighbors, or treat yourself to a platter full while you marathon watch rom-coms on February 14.
14Strawberry Cake Balls
These delightful strawberry cake balls are coated with a thick layer of milk chocolate and dusted with red sanding sugar. I can only imagine that biting into these bite-sized cake morsels by Dinner Then Dessert taste much like enjoying a chocolate covered strawberry. Plus, you get to enjoy the taste of cake without having to bake an entire cake, which is likely the reason that the genius who invented cake balls invented them in the first place.
15Valentine Oreo Truffles
When you combine the chocolatey goodness of an Oreo cookie with cream cheese, cover it in white candy melts, and top it with a red fondant heart, the result is a delectable valentine Oreo truffle from That's What Che Said. These tasty treats are the perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day — whether you're celebrating with your sweetheart, your kiddos, or your girlfriends. Even though they look good enough to share, these treats are so luxurious that you might want to keep them all for yourself and enjoy your own personal Valentine's celebration.