Interdisciplinary studies senior Montserrat Ortiz, who owns Busy Bee: Crafts by Montse on Facebook and Instagram, recommends a memory explosion box as a Valentine’s gift.
Brigitte Ortiz | THE RIDER
Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate love, friendship and affection. To show appreciation to our loved ones, we buy them gifts or sometimes make them ourselves.
The Rider interviewed two UTRGV students with small businesses about ideas for do-it-yourself gifts.
Carolina Rios, an interdisciplinary studies senior, runs a home-based business in Mission that sells treats and sweets online called Triple R Sweets. She bakes cakes, cupcakes, cheesecake, mostachón (meringue cake), chocoflan, brownies and empanadas.
Rios’ desserts can also be ordered in miniature sizes.
“Those are like the sweet stuff, I also have for like the savory or spicy,” Rios said. “I have those candies that are enchilados and I have the apples that are covered with tamarindo and they have chamoy and gummies.”
She said she posts on her Instagram and Facebook what she made and if she hasn’t made it customers can send her a picture and she can try to recreate it or do something similar.
For easy-to-bake treats, she suggests cupcakes or brownies.
“Just because the brownie, you can make it, like, in a rectangular container, like a cake, and then if you have, like, a heart-shaped cookie cutter you can cut it and that would look cute,” Rios said.
For a simple cupcake recipe, she suggests buying the prepared box mix and following the recipe on the back of the package.
“You can substitute the water for milk and if you don’t want to use the oil, you can also substitute it with [melted] butter,” Rios said. “So, it would be the flour, the eggs, the butter or the oil and the milk.”
She makes the frosting by combining butter, powdered sugar and vanilla.
“For the buttercream, you can use two sticks of butter, softened and unsalted,” Rios said. “I use unsalted, and then you can use 1½ teaspoons of vanilla extract. And then you can do around four cups of powdered sugar.
“First, you have to beat the butter and make sure that it gets, like, fluffy and then you … can do the vanilla and then the sugar at the end and add it one cup at a time. And, if you want to, you can add milk, like one or two tablespoons, but I personally don’t use it just because it gets too soft. But, if you like it more creamy, you can. You can add milk or you can even do heavy whipping cream.”
She said chocolate-covered strawberries, macarons or pretzels can be added as toppings.
When baking cupcakes, she suggests placing a few grains of rice under the cupcake liners so the oil or butter won’t stain the cupcake liner.
“You can also buy the [decorating] tip and the disposable bag, or you can get a silicone bag,” Rios said. “They’re not that expensive. Those are, like, in Hobby Lobby, Michaels and [decorating] tips are like a $1 to $2. … The most basic one is the [Wilton decorating tip] 1M.”
She said to make a rose, start piping in the middle and go outward in a circle.
“That would look nice on a cupcake and if you mess up, that’s OK,” Rios said. “You can just add sprinkles, or you can put your favorite chocolate on top.”
Montserrat Ortiz, an interdisciplinary studies senior who owns Busy Bee: Crafts by Montse on Facebook and Instagram. Ortiz makes shirts, cups, keychains, dog tags and more. She suggested a DIY project called a memory explosion box.
“What happens is you put pictures inside of the box and when you open it, all of the pictures come out and you can put a little gift inside,” Ortiz said.
For the materials, the small white memory explosion box is available at Michaels for $3.50. Also needed are a printer, sticker or regular printer paper, glue for the pictures and stickers or markers.
“So first, you have to go on your computer and find 12 pictures that you really like and put them on a Word document, size them to 4-by-4 [inches, or 10.1 cm x 10.1 cm] so that they can fit inside the squares,” Ortiz said. “After that, you print them, you cut them out and you can start pasting them the way you like around the squares in the box.”
Students can put stickers around the box, write a message on top of the box or place a gift inside.
“What I did was that I added a little bit of, like, foil paper, like the ones you put in gift bags,” she said. “And then, put a few candies, so something simple. And then, I put heart stickers around it and I wrote on top, ‘Hi, open for a surprise.’”
She said the total cost for the project, if you have a printer, is under $10 and it would take 30 to 45 minutes to complete.
