My boys made homemade "Sweethearts" this weekend:


This Sunday I heard a ruckus in the kitchen.

"Hey! What are you doing out there!"

I tried to move, but pain shot through my abdomen, through the spinal nerves connecting skeleton to muscle. Ugh. I had surgery last week to remove a huge honking ovarian cyst. I'll be posting my experience (with photos!) along with some helpful information about ovarian cysts in the next couple of days, once I can sit pain-free long enough to tell my story. In the meantime, I'm still downing prescription pain medication and viewing the world through a soft haze. My youngest son, age 9, worries about me. He brings me cool damp washcloths and read funny dinosaur knock-knock jokes as I curl up on the couch.

"It's okay, Mom. I'm making your famous Valentine's treats. 12's helping me."

I smiled.

"Well take some photos, please! I'll show all my online friends how to make them, too."

9 and 12 gathered corn syrup, confectioner's sugar, red food color. I didn't have to see them to know the routine. We make homemade "Sweethearts" - those crisp conversation candies with the loving sayings made famous by Necco - every weekend before Valentine's. It's surprisingly easy to make your own!

Make Your Own Sweethearts

Ingredients
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1 packet unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup water
a 2-pound bag of powdered sugar
Natural extracts like peppermint, lemon, cinnamon
Food coloring, several colors if you like, but we simply use red
small cookie cutters or a sharp knife

Mix the corn syrup, gelatin, and water in a glass bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds, or until the syrup is dissolved. Stir.

Add 1 cup powdered sugar to the bowl and stir to combine. If you want to make four different flavors and colors, separate solution into four bowls. Add food coloring - you want to add a little more than you think you should, make the color rich and dark as it will fade as you add more sugar.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of flavored extract to each bowl. My boys like cinnamon.

Add 1/2 cup powdered sugar and stir to combine. Using an electric mixture is a huge help!

Here's 9 testing the mixture at this point:

Continue adding powdered sugar by the 1/2 cup and beating it carefully to ensure a good mix. You will use the rest of the bag of sugar! When the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl and has lost most of its stickiness, it is ready!

Dump the dough onto a smooth surface covered with powdered sugar. Knead it just as you do bread dough. You may need to add more powdered sugar to keep it from sticking. Knead until the dough is satiny and not sticky at all.

12 dumps the dough onto the kneading board:

Roll the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1/4 to 1/8 an inch.

9 rolls the dough:

Use cookie cutters or a sharp knife to make fun heart shapes. We don't have cookie cutters small enough, so my boys used knives. It was probably a good thing I was on the couch and out of sight!

The boys make fun shapes:

The photo at the beginning of this little piece shows the boys' finished product. You need to wait 24 hours for the little boogers to fully dry. At that point you can write cute sayings on them with a food-coloring pen. My boys are much too macho for that!

Happy Valentine's Day!