Make Our Own Conversation Hearts? Ok, We'll Try It.

When I saw this pin on Pinterest: Homemade Conversation Hearts, I thought "Oh wow what I cute idea! The kids and I can make these!" NEVER AGAIN. The recipe itself is fine and the outcome is indeed very cute, but HOLY COW these were a lot more involved than we expected.

At first I thought it wasn't so bad. It started getting sort of frustrating when the flavorings and food coloring kept making the dough too sticky and we had to keep adding more and more powdered sugar. On the third of the four colors I was getting a little irked, but it was ok; the kids were being good sports and helping tremendously. It took three of us in latex gloves to accomplish this:

Hey, it's still pretty fun at this point!

One person for holding and kneading the dough (me), one for adding the coloring and flavors (Miss G), and one for adding the additional powdered sugar and also keeping the other colors from drying out (Miss S). Once we got the dough appropriately flavored and colored, then came the rolling out, cutting out, and placing on the parchment paper. The easy part! <--(I thought)

Miss G transferring some of the cut hearts to the parchment paper.

Ooh, pretty.

Candy lace

This recipe makes A LOT of candy hearts. And after you cut, push out each heart as it sticks inside the tiny cutter, transfer to the parchment paper, and cry out with your fist in the air to St. Valentine, you might find yourself feeling the same as I did while making these. 

These are almost all of the hearts that we got decorated. We were pretty much done.
Please direct your attention to the two obviously child-made ones. 

Perhaps you are looking for a zen-master trial for yourself...may I recommend making homemade conversation hearts? To be fair, I really have to hand it to Diamonds for Dessert. I think it's amazing that she created AND decorated all of hers. Even using a little stamp and everything. That's hardcore! Candy making is a delicate art and she is a candy artist. 

Also I might add that at this point we were on our second day of snow days + I was sick, so maybe my tolerance level was low for such time consuming and detailed tasks. 

Regardless, I'm glad that we tried these and (pretty much) completed them. So every heart doesn't have a message; it's really ok. We will put these out for our smorgastarta feast tonight. 

Now I'm off to make a sandwich cake with Husband and the Little Ladies. He has drawn up a design for the top of the cake of a wizard vs. dragon duel in a forest. Extreme!