Valentine's Day is almost here, and if you're planning on spending a small fortune on chocolates for your sweet, hold up! Consider making your own chocolate truffles -- in addition to the "OMG, you shouldn't have" look, you'll get bonus points for having taken the time out to make something by hand.

Ok, so I know I've lost some of you already. Hear me out. "But truffles are soooo haaarrrrrd to make," I can hear you sighing. "I could never do that." Au contraire, mon cheri. Despite the fact that stores charge big bucks for these little balls of chocolate love, truffles are actually one of the easiest candies to make. Within an hour you'll have a few dozen handmade chocolate truffles, and a one heck of a fabulous Valentine's Day gift. And if you're sweetie is of the vegan persuasion, I've got you covered with a vegan truffle recipe as well.

First things first: You'll be melting chocolate, which means you'll need to chop it first. Like, chop it as finely as possible. It's easy to chop the long, flat bars you get from the baking section of the grocery store, and I recommend you use a large chef's knife or my weapon of choice: a meat cleaver. If all else fails, don't fret. You can use semi-sweet chocolate chips without suffering any dire consequences.

Second: You must use a double boiler to melt your chocolate. Any other means of melting will burn the chocolate or turn it into a seized up lump of concrete. If you don't have a real double boiler, never fear. Find a pot and a large bowl that will snugly fit in the pot without slipping into it. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't rest in the water. Rather, you want there to be a good inch or two between the bottom of the bowl and the water in the pot. Also, be sure to not get any water into your chocolate mixture, lest it seize up. If this happens, you'll need to dump it out and start over. Sad panda. For more information, check out this guide on melting chocolate.

Now, let's get our hands dirty!

Basic Chocolate Truffles Recipe
Yields about 24 3/4" truffles.

Ingredients:
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped fine
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier

Possible Coatings:
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup chai spices
1/4 cup of whatever fun, powdery thing you'd like to roll your truffles in
Small foil cups for packaging (available from your local craft store)

Instructions:
Fill the bottom of your double boiler with a few inches of water, set it over medium heat and bring it to a boil. Have the chopped chocolate waiting in the top of your double boiler but not yet set over the heat.

In a small saucepan, heat the heavy cream just until you see bubbles start to fowl around the edges of the pan. Immediately pour the cream over your chocolate. Set the bowl over the waiting double boiler, stirring until the chocolate is completely melted and mixed with the cream. Stir in vanilla and Grand Marnier, then cover and refrigerate until firm enough to handle (about 4 hours).

That's it! Seriously! And in case you weren't aware, you just made a chocolate ganache, one of the most delectable substances in the dessert world. Go you!

After your ganache has firmed up, line a cookie sheet with parchment. Scoop about a teaspoonful of ganache and then, working quickly, roll it into a sphere shape with your hands. Set the rolled truffles on the lined cookie sheet, and keep going until you've finished all of your chocolate mixture. Your truffle may look a little sticky at first. That's fine, we'll smooth them out in a second.

Note: Try to make sure your hands are as cool as possible or your truffles will melt as you roll them. It might be a good idea to keep a paper towel or two nearby, so that if your hands get caked with chocolate you can wipe them off. It also helps to stick the bowl of ganache back in the refrigerator for 5 minutes if you notice it getting super sticky.

Coatings
Let your chocolate truffles sit for about ten minutes at room temperature, or stick them in the fridge if it's a warm day (say, above 70 degrees). Add cocoa powder (or hazelnuts, or powdered sugar) to a small round-bottomed bowl. One at a time, pick up your truffles and roll them between your hands for a few seconds to barely warm the surface, then drop them in the bowl of coating. Toss the bowl a bit until the truffle is completely covered in coating, then set it back on the cookie sheet. If you end up with a too much coating on your truffles, don't shake them off until after they have firmed up again.

Once you're done, put the cookie sheet full of truffles in the fridge for half an hour. Once they're firm again, shake off any excess coating and put them in little foil cups for decoration.

These chocolate truffles will keep in the fridge for two weeks, but can be kept at room temperature for a few days. I like them a little softer, so I pull them out of the fridge a few hours before serving.

For a little variety, check out these other truffle recipes:

• Peanut Butter Crunch Truffles
• Mint Chocolate Truffles
• Mocha Truffles
• Raw Cinnamon-Sunflower Truffles

If all the raindrops
Were lemondrops and gumdrops
Oh, what a rain that would be!
Standing outside, with my mouth open wide
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
If all the raindrops
Were lemondrops and gumdrops
Oh, what a rain that would be!

If all the snowflakes
Were candy bars and milkshakes
Oh, what a snow that would be!
Standing outside, with my mouth open wide
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
If all the snowflakes
Were candy bars and milkshakes
Oh, what a snow that would be!

These are lyrics from a horrible song by Barney, the big purple dinosaur. The fact that I know it means I've spent too much time working with small children. As you can sense here, the tune unfolds as a series of meditations on a central theme. The first section poses a question and offers up a winsome, catchy answer; the second breathlessly imagines an equally scrumptious scenario, and resolves in the same fashion. Each verse ends with a fantasy plucked straight out of some powdered sugar-smeared four-year old's optimistic re-write of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. What's (sort of) fun about the song though -- at least for four-year olds -- is that the verses lend themselves to inspired free association. If all the night fog were 'nilla fudge and eggnog, for example. The possibilities are limitless so long as you adhere to the childish conceit.

Unless all the sunbeams happened to be kosher salt and sea bream, the world described in this tune would be a wretched place for me to inhabit. Even if widespread stickiness and insect onslaughts didn't pose insurmountable sanitation problems, I would be submerged in gastronomic hell, soaked in a deluge of food I didn't like and everyone else -- joyous screaming little ones skating on lakes of jelly, old ladies slipping on hard candy cobblestones, climbers chewing their way to the tops of cookie mountains -- seemed to love.

Sweets can pretty much shove it. That's the short story, I suppose, but in truth, it's a complicated issue of taste. You see, I like most pies, especially plum, chocolate in croissants and puddings, lemon bars, caramel ice cream, malts, and jelly beans. I respect carrot cake, mostly for its steadfast association with cream cheese frosting. I will rarely refuse a sandwich cookie when it's offered. I am open to enlightenment courtesy of thrilling and creative restaurant desserts of all sorts. Yet I never crave sweet things or go out of my way to consume them. I'm convinced the very bland affection I do muster is a product of 29 years spent immersed in a culture obsessed with them. Desserts are not central to my eating routines, or even peripheral. If they disappeared, I would shed no corn syrupy tears. In the end, I eat them if they are around because, simply put, I will eat nearly anything. Unfortunately, they are often around -- one-dimensional and over-bearing, yet brutally effective at providing the jolts of fat and sugar we're conditioned to desire. Two weeks ago, I was substituting for a flu-ridden history teacher at Lowell High. A kid suggested I let the class leave five minutes early, and I said no. He then asked if I'd accept a chocolate bribe. Having left my meager lunch of leftovers at home, I wondered out loud if he might be able to find me fried chicken instead. Give me the choice between savory and sweet and I'll always lean towards the former.

This frosting-heavy time of year, sweet reigns supreme. In the days leading up to Christmas, office kitchens look like Candyland blooming with cheap chocolate truffles, tins of shortbread, fruitcake, and panettone from Walgreens. Red-and-white canes and Hershey's kisses bulge in stockings. Avid bakers exchange trays of garish cookies iced green, red, and snowy white. Holiday celebrations can be as much about sugar as booze -- particularly work parties, oddly enough. Four years ago, I wore a crisp shirt in the basement of a Financial District hotel and sipped whiskey, glumly watching pastries and puddings vanish from platters as the big boss -- white-maned, stooped, a long arm wrapped around his beaming wife -- grimly intoned that it had been a good year. Hooray, everyone had shouted, thinking of their bonuses, toasting, lowering slices of a towering cake onto plates. The sight of so much confection made me feel sicker than did all the Jack Daniel's I was drinking. I'm prejudiced against sweets. Individuals are reasonably fine, but as a whole population, they rub me the wrong way. So I give out homemade hot sauce and artisanal salame as holiday gifts, and refrain from ordering dessert in restaurants unless I'm with someone's mom or dining in a professional capacity. Part of the problem is the infantile glee sweets elicit in people -- even though they're often described in silly quasi-adult terms -- sinful, indulgent, naughty, and lusty -- and framed as transgressions for which to (eventually) feel guilt. It puts me off. Every late December, cubicle jockeys scuttle down hallways, scarfing whatever delights happen to be circulating around their offices. At the same time, they vocally fret over how their excesses will impact their health and appearance. Inevitably, they resolve to do penance the following week, once the season is over. "I shouldn't be doing this," I once heard a co-worker sigh blandly, her hands digging determinedly into a box for the last lumpy cupcake, "but I'm doing it." Weirdly enough, I first heard those words muttered by the slimy male lead of a classic 1980s adult film. He was committing adultery with the help of two video store clerks, and surfing past a fleeting twinge of contrition.

The love/hate relationships people carry on with sweets may come from culture, but we're actually biologically wired to want them in the first place. Last year, some scientists figured out that our brains can sense the calories in food independent of what we're tasting by presenting "sweet-blind" mice with water samples laced with sucralose and real sugar. The mice preferred the samples with calories. As it turned out, the mousy reward system is galvanized into action by caloric intake, as levels of the brain chemical dopamine, known to be central to sparking that system's circuitry, spike with each sip. My chemicals too may sizzle in the presence of a Twix bar, but my reward system clearly responds more feebly than most -- because I never feel rewarded after an encounter. I'm not alone in my attitude. I know people with heartier aversions. A friend from college won't even drink orange juice. Another friend's dad candidly once told me he didn't like sweets because he drank too much, and something about the combination didn't jive with his system.

Sweets are even harder to take after the holidays, once they're stale. Mass-produced candies may outlive us all, but those old abandoned cookies, their iced tops hardened and cracked, the fossilized fruitcakes -- a few days after Christmas, they start looking like ruins, diminutive Grey Gardens, once decadent, now downtrodden, in shambles. There's something very lonely about them -- especially when its clear time and care went into their preparation -- and they're hard to throw away -- even if you didn't really want them in the first place.

Bernalites sure eat well there up on the hill. Dawdling along a rolling 8-block strip of commerce, you could go from Avedano's killer Cuban sandwich (and impressive local/sustainable meat selection) to Moki's sushi or Vino Rosso's salume. Or you could nibble Peruvian bolitas de yuca at Piqueo's or momo at Little Nepal, then finish up with ice cream at Maggie Mudd (including non-dairy versions made with soy or coconut milk). There's coffee and bagels at Martha's, eggs and toast at Moonshine, iced tea and wraps on the shady back deck at Progressive Grounds.

All good, but where, where were our Paris-perfect pains au chocolat? Our savory swirls of fluffy bread filled with miso, scallion, and sesame seeds? The Ritual Roasters coffee painstakingly dripped cup by cup? We Hill dwellers may be very busy walking our dogs or itsy-bitsy-spidering our charming offspring, but we have our standards, and our needs. (As well as no patience for schlepping down to the Mission to make our antsy toddlers wait in that endless Tartine line.)

Which makes the arrival of Sandbox Bakery, after months of window-peering, a reason for rejoicing up here. Chowhound buzz promised a summer opening; permit processes being what they are, the bakery opened on Cortland on December 7. Charcoal-walled without, white-tiled within, the bakery is sleek, almost a little stark for now, with no seating. But all the better to focus on the pastries, arranged in a glass-fronted case facing the whooshing automatic doors.

Prices, for now, are very reasonable: croissants $2 to $2.50, scones $2, filled buns $2.25 to $3, cookies .75 cents, muffins $2. Warm pastries come out of the oven in waves. Longing for something flaky and croissant-ish mid-morning, we were sorry to see only rolls, muffins, and scones on offer. But no worries: a few minutes later, owner/pastry chef Mutsumi Takehara emerged from the back with a platter of oven-hot raisin swirls and sweet cheese croissants.

It's worth hanging around for these; the raisin swirl we tried was ethereally light and barely sweet, shards of a dream that disappeared like snowflakes. A strawberry scone was more earthbound but still light and easy to crumble into mouthfuls, and well larded with sweet fruit.

Beyond croissants, scones, and muffins, Takehara's workhorse is a light, eggy yeast dough, like an airy challah, that she uses to make her version of kashi-pan, the filled buns popular in Japanese bakeries. On the savory side, the dough is rounded into a fat doughnut shape and filled with corn kernels and a splash of creamy bechamel, creating a perfect accompaniment to tomato soup. (You'll have to make your own soup, though, since Sandbox does only pastries for now.) It's braided around an unexpected but rewarding (for you savory-breakfast types) smear of miso and sesame. It's flattened and topped with a tangy, bittersweet gloss of yuzu marmalade.

Takehara has the deft touch of a pro, one who's happy to being doing her own thing at last after years of working around town. Her impressive pastry resume includes stints at La Farine, Chez Panisse, Rubicon, and, for the past 10 years, Slanted Door. These are pastries of delicacy and light, subtle rather than sweet. And for all you groggy new parents starting the day at dawn (they don't call this Maternal Hill for nothing), Sandbox opens at 6am on weekdays, 7am on Saturdays.

Sandbox Bakery, 833 Cortland Ave., San Francisco, CA. (415) 642-8580. Mon-Fri, 6am-3pm; Sat 7am-3pm.
Follow on Twitter: @SandboxBakery

Photos copyright Sandbox Bakery