Mint Hearts (with Recipe)

These mint hearts are a really simple Valentine's Day treat. I made an extra stiff cream cheese mint dough, rolled it out between two sheets of parchment and cut it with a heart shaped aspic cutter (aspic cutters are smaller than most cookie cutters--I usually use mine to cut the centers of linzer cookies).

The trick is to let the 'dough' dry just a bit in the air before you cut it, then press down straight firmly and quickly with the cutter. It will probably stay on the paper, but if the mint comes off with the cutter, just carefully push it out. Let them dry a bit and seperate them with an offset spatula. If some of them aren't cut though, don't worry, just re-cut them. The scraps can be rerolled, but they won't look as pretty and the texture may be slightly off, so you should probably keep those bits for yourself.

Air dry the mints and store them in a single layer at room temperature. They are little, minty, melt in your mouth, bits of goodness. I dare you to eat just one!

Recipe:

• 4 oz full fat cream cheese
• 5 cups powdered sugar 
• 1/4 tsp peppermint extract
• Food coloring (for these I used pink gel coloring, but normal liquid coloring will work too, you just may need to add a tad more powdered sugar)

Beat the cream cheese with 4 cups of powdered sugar on medium-low in an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until it forms a cohesive dough. Add the peppermint extract and food coloring, mix. Add the last cup of powdered sugar, mix. Tweak coloring and flavoring if you want. The dough should be relatively stiff. If it is too sticky or creamy, add more powdered sugar.

To shape these, see above.

For hand rolled mints instead of cut out ones, check out the recipe here (it is basically the same, but a bit less sugar and makes more since the hand rolled ones are generally bigger).