What's Cookin' In FatCat's Kitchen?: February 2010

Well, no, not really. A little more conversation with these sweet treats.

I have very fond memories of elementary school Valentine's day and receiving lollipops, chocolate, and most importantly - Necco Conversation Sweethearts. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a picture:

For the first time in years, I didn't go out and buy a giant bag of these (I'm waiting for February 15th when they go on 75% off), but I was certainly inspired by them.

For Hanukkah I received a gift card to use however I wanted. I opted to get these:

There is little better than 101 plastic cookie cutters. They make me happy. They make cookie baking fun. They make my little heart sing. Or something cliche like that.

In this batch of cookie cutters there are hearts. Hmmm.... Valentine's day.... Conversation Hearts.... Conversation Heart Cookies!!!!!!!

I used the sugar cookie and royal icing recipes that I used during the holiday cookie extravaganza.

I made my dough, chilled it, and rolled it out. Then I got to do the fun part of cutting the cookies. I love getting new cookie cutters!

So cute.

I baked the cookies and they came out perfectly. I'm finally getting this whole timing thing down. It's not as easy as it seems.

Seriously, aren't they adorable?

After they cooled, it was time to get decorating. I whipped up some royal icing and divided it into 3 different bowls. I made each bowl a different color. Pink, Green and Yellow. I put some of the icing into my decorating squeeze bottles and added an appropriate piping tip. The bottles look like these (note: these are not my bottles - just similar.)

I divided the cookies into colors (22 each) and piped out a border on each one.

And I let them sit to harden. This part takes a while.

When the borders were hardened it was time to thin out the remaining icing by adding 2 tablespoons of water. Some people use milk. I chose the path that was closest. With the thinned out icing I "flooded" the cookies. I squeezed out a pool of icing and spread it with a toothpick.

And I left them to harden. Again - this take a looong time.

So I watched late night TV. Reruns of Sex and The City, Seinfeld, and whatever infomercials were on. They're not the same without Billy Mayes yelling at you to "BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!"

As soon as the icing was dried, I pulled out my trusty edible ink pens:

And got to work. I took a handful of Conversation Heart sayings and wrote them on my cookies. The original idea was to do this with icing but at 2am I wasn't about to whip up another batch of royal icing. So edible ink it was.