Conversation Heart Cookies

As for almost any holiday, Valentines day being no different, I made cookies for my co-workers. These ones were going to be awesome. I found a recipe on line at marthastewart.com for wonderful Conversation Heart Cookies. You need to plan these cookie out... so start today. The dough needs to be refrigerated for at least 1 hour, and the frosting needs to set overnight, before you can write on them. Martha uses gel food coloring to stamp her message on the cookies, I used edible ink markers (I think this is a lot easier for kids). You'll also notice that for my Royal Icing I decided to pipe a bead of contrasting icing around the edge of my cookies (you do this right away and let it dry), 1 for a little color fun and 2 to keep the thinned down icing from running off the sides of the cookie. If you've never worked with royal icing, it takes a few tries to get used to it. The amount of water you add can make or break it. I kept it really thick to do the edge piping and thinned it down to flood the cookie. I wrapped them individually and put them all in a nice basket with a tag (of course!) I hope you make this cookie for your loved ones, and add a special/meaningful message.