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Prepare a sweet treat for your friends and family this Valentine’s Day with these conversation heart sugar cookies!

Last year I thought making some conversation heart sugar cookies would be a super cute way to tell my family I love them on Valentine’s Day.  Thank goodness the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach and not their eyeballs because they tasted a lot yummier than they looked.  I used a store bought dough that spread a lot during baking and so my hearts ended up looking deformed.  The icing from a tube never quite hardened and the glittery gel icing I used to write my Valentine’s messages was leftover from some new year’s cupcakes.  They were tasty but they were not very pretty!

I fixed that this year by going all out, no holds barred with these conversation heart cookies.  I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe {the one that I used to make my Patriotic Swirl Cookies} and finally found the perfect frosting recipe!  One that’s sweet but not too sweet and so easy to make you’ll want to make a different kind of cookie for every holiday just to have an excuse to make it again 😛 Which I so often do.

I normally hate to roll things out.  I drop scones and biscuits and basically if I can avoid rolling it out I do!  Sometimes I go the extra mile and roll things like homemade poptarts or tortillas but one thing I will never ever enjoy doing is trying to get it from the board to the baking sheet without stretching out the dough into some monstrous shape.  Does this happen to anyone else?  Take a tip from a dough rolling hater and roll your dough directly onto the foil or parchment paper, cut your shapes and peel away the extra dough.  Then just move the paper or foil to the baking sheet.  Voila!  No transferring and no sad, stretched out dough shapes.

You don’t have to let this dough chill before rolling and I prefer to roll it between parchment paper for less mess since you don’t need flour. But you DO need to chill them before baking. This will ensure that your cookies hold their shape in the oven and you’re not left with my disastrously deformed cookies from last year 😉

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Conversation Heart Sugar Cookies

Yield: 18 cookies

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

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Ingredients

For the Cookies:

• 2 cups flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¾ cup salted butter, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla

For the Icing:

• 4 1/2 Tbs Meringue Powder
• 1/2 cup +2 Tbs water
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 2 pounds powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 Tbs vanilla
• Desired gel food colors
• Extra water for flooding

Instructions

For the Cookies:

1. Preheat oven to 325. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in egg and vanilla and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
2. Sift in flour and mix until combined. Do not over mix.
3. Roll dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper until about ¼" thickness and cut into desired shape.
4. Chill cut shapes for 1 hour before baking.
5. Bake at 325 degrees for about 13 to 15 minutes or until edges are golden brown.
6. Immediately transfer to a cool, flat surface.

For the Royal Icing:

1. Add merginue powder and water to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix until foamy.
2. Add cream of tartar and mix.
3. Add powdered sugar all at once and cover mixer with a towel to minimize mess. Mix on the lowest speed for 3-4 minutes then add vanilla.
4. Mix for another 6-7 minutes or until stiff peaks form.
5. Separate into bowls and color before adding water to thin for piping.
6. Add water in 1/2 tsp increments, mixing thoroughly until you can draw a knife through your icing and it comes together in 10-15 seconds. This is perfect for piping and filling.
7. Add more royal icing to thicken it to 25-30 second icing for writing the letters.