Conversation Heart Cookies

Conversation Heart Cookies 

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Martha Stewart Living, February 2009

• Yield Makes 70 cookies            Ingredients

• 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for surface
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Royal Icing
• Gel-paste food coloring (such as leaf green, lemon yellow, peach, red, rose, and violet)

Directions

1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy. With mixer running, add egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture gradually, beating until just incorporated. Divide dough in half; flatten each half into a disk, and wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees with racks in top third and lower third. Let 1 disk of dough stand at room temperature just until soft enough to roll, about 10 minutes. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out dough to just under 1/4-inch thickness, adding more flour as needed to keep dough from sticking. Cut out cookies with a 2-inch heart cutter, and place them 2 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roll out scraps once, and repeat. Repeat with remaining disk of dough. Freeze cookies until very firm, about 15 minutes.
3. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through and switching from top to bottom, until edges turn golden brown, 14 to 16 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies will keep, covered, for up to 1 week.
4. Divide royal icing into 1/2-cup portions in small bowls. Tint each with a different gel-paste food coloring, starting with just a drop, mixing well, and adding more, drop by drop, to reach desired shade. Transfer 1 bowl of icing to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/8-inch round plain tip. Pipe the outline around edge of each cookie, then fill in with frosting. Poke air bubbles with a toothpick. Transfer decorated cookies to a parchment-lined baking sheet, and let stand uncovered overnight until dry.
5. Arrange stamp letters to create desired phrases. (We stamped LUV U, UR A QT, BFF, LYLAS, B MINE, and 2GTBT.) Fold a paper towel into quarters. Squeeze a small amount of red gel-paste food coloring onto a paper towel, and press stamp in coloring. (You may need to blot stamp a few times on a clean paper towel if coloring is too thick.) Lightly press stamp on top of icing in center of each cookie. Let stand until dry, about 30 minutes. Stamped cookies will keep, covered, for up to 3 days.

Cook's Note

We used a Cosco 2000 Plus Custom Stamp Kit (No. 614107), $24.99, from Staples.

how to make candy buttons

how to make candy buttons

 

I always loved those old fashioned candy buttons—remember the ones with the brightly colored blobs stuck to strips of white paper? I loved them even when they tore the paper and I got a mouth full of it.
Back when I only had my son, and had a lot more time to be creative, I used to make iced sugar cookies. Since they took an entire day to complete, they were a pure labor of love. But it was satisfying when I flooded the royal icing just right, and ended up with a cookie with a perfectly smooth, silky surface.
I don’t know why I never made the connection, but I finally discovered that the same royal icing I used to flood my cookies was the same thing they used to make candy buttons. Naturally, I had to give them a try.
Last week, when I was done making sugar cookies for my cookbook, I had some extra royal icing in two squeeze bottles: one pink, and one lavender. They were the perfect colors to try out some candy buttons, and the perfect colors for Valentine’s Day.

The trick of using squeeze bottles for royal icing is an idea I got from watching a special segment on Martha Stewart Living. They did a little story on Elani’s, a New York based cookie bakery that seems to have started the trend of making those flooded iced cookies. In the little video, they were using the clear squeeze bottles for all their frosting, whether it was for piping or filling, so I’ve used the same technique ever since. You can get them in the cake decorating supply section of most craft stores, and they’re readily available from Wilton cake supplies. I love them, and highly recommend them for decorating.
royal icing
If you are making this icing for frosting cookies, double it.
I’m always a little hesitant to use fresh egg whites in this recipe, since they aren’t cooked, and I don’t like using meringue powder since it’s loaded with all sorts of ingredients I can’t pronounce. But I recently discovered all natural powdered egg whites (which you can purchase here). They’re ideal for this recipe, though liquid pasteurized egg whites are alright, too. They just don’t set up as well as when you use the powdered egg whites.
2 cups powdered sugar, plus more if necessary
3 tablespoons warm water
1 egg white, or 2 teaspoons of powdered egg white plus 2 tablespoons of additional water
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1. Place all ingredients in a bowl, and beat with an electric mixer on medium high speed for 5-6 minutes until thick and glossy. Icing should fall in ribbons when you lift it with a spoon and let it fall back into the bowl. The ribbon should sit on the surface for about 3-4 seconds before “melting” back into the bowl.

2. Divide icing, tint with desired colors, and pour into food safe squeeze bottles. Cut strips of parchment paper or copy paper. Squeeze little drops of icing in rows along the strips of paper. Allow to dry for 6 hours, or overnight.

cupcakes for everyday of the month

Let's try them all

Tiny Elf or Doll accents

The big boy is from Krispy Kreme. The mini is Emma's version.

The box of donuts is really a pill box....Emma's holding her favorite, a cheerio dipped in chocolate, then sprinkles. The others are cheerios dipped in confectioners' sugar and cheerios rolled in cinnamon sugar.

A selection of Emma's mini cakes.

The mini cakes are really oreos with a layer of frosting between them, then more frosting on tops and sides...plus decorations.

The cakes should "rest" before anyone tries cutting a slice so the oreos have a chance to soften and become, yes, cake-like. Emma used a small pastry tip to make florettes and tubes of colored gels for the lettering.

You can see by comparing Emma's hand to these peanut butter thumbprint cookies just how teeny they are.

Emma used store-bought peanut-butter cookie dough and regular-size chocolate chips instead of the standard Hershey's Kiss..

This mini cone is really a Bugle and a "scoop" of seasoned cream cheese (you can use a melon ball-er, or just roll in the palm of your hands). Kids like sugared cream cheese and fruit-flavored (think strawberry) cream cheese. Bigger kids enjoy salt-and-white-pepper (vanilla) and smoked-salmon (strawberry) flavors.

Pizza anyone?

Yup, those are Slim Jim's Emma sliced to make her pepperoni.

Mmmm.

Last but not least: Emma's watermelon--she cuts a lime in half lengthwise, scoops out the pulp, fills with strawberry jello, tosses in a few mini-chips for seeds...and refrigerates until set.

Pretty cute, no? What's your fave?

One day, Emma came home from a playdate with her friend Annie with a rectangular take-out soy-sauce dish filled with the mini donuts. I was in love…what a great cooking project! Then, she told me the idea came from an American Girl book, Tiny Treats. We got one immediately, and Emma started making one or two every weekend–get this…instead of TV time!!! That’s just about the best recommendation I can give! I couldn’t even tell you which is my favorite—I think they’re all so adorable. Which is yours?