Household Ways: Homemade Conversation Hearts

I found this tutorial on how to make your own Conversation Hearts, and I knew immediately that I had to try it. They were surprisingly easy to make and you can make them to your own tastes. You can make them any colors you like, any flavors you like and write on them whatever you want, including personalizing some for the loves of your life.

To make your own Conversation Hearts, you will need:
1/2 cup water
2 tsps. light corn syrup
1 packet of unflavored gelatin
2 pounds powdered sugar, plus a little more for dusting
variety of food colors and extracts

Mix water and the light corn syrup to the of unflavored gelatin until the gelatin is well-distributed. Microwave the mix for 30 seconds to dissolve the gelatin, stir well.

Add gelatin mixture to a mixing bowl along with 1 cup of powdered sugar. Mix ingredients using the paddle attachment (you can also use a handheld mixer). When the sugar is well blended you will add another cup of powdered sugar and mix until well-blended again. Continue this process until you have added 2 lb of powdered sugar. The dough should be stiff at this point.

Next you will knead the sticky dough on a generously-dusted powdered sugar surface. Roll the dough over itself adding powdered sugar as needed to decrease the stickiness. A word to the wise,
the dough hardens up pretty quickly, so you want it to be a little sticky or it will become too crumbly by the end of rolling it out. We added a bit too much sugar to ours.

Now you can add color and flavoring. We separated our dough into four balls for the four different colors and flavors we used. We added the color first, lightest color first, and then we added the flavoring extracts using what we had on hand (vanilla, almond, cinnamon and peppermint) but the possible extracts you could use are endless.

Finally you roll your dough and cut out your hearts using smallest cutters you have. You can make as thick as you like but since your cutter will most likely be larger than the store bought variety, you may want to it out a bit thinner.