Alison's heart shaped candies
Looking for something to make for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day? Even though there are so many options, it can be hard to do something special when living in a dorm.
Everyone loves the little heart-shaped candies that people give out on Valentine’s Day, so I tried learning how to make candy hearts in my dorm. Here’s how it went.
The first thing I did was find a non-bake recipe. I only have a microwave, so baking was out of the question.
The recipe I found was from seriouseats.com. The main ingredients are gelatin, sprite, and powdered sugar. Then, you can mix in different flavors and food colorings.
I bought all of my ingredients at Walmart. In total, it cost me about $20. It would have been less if I didn’t misread an ingredient. I got way too much sprite when I only needed four ounces.
Once I got everything into my dorm, I followed the recipe to make the candy hearts.
Everything was going fine until I had to add the powdered sugar. I first started by trying to mix with a whisk. Then it got stiff. The mixture kept getting stuck inside the whisk and I eventually had to give up on it and use a fork.
After fighting with the mixture for about 10 minutes, I was ready to start kneading the dough. I realized I would have to use my desk to knead the dough because I had no other surfaces that would fit it.
I put down powdered sugar to prevent the dough from sticking. This sort of helped but it made a mess everywhere. The kneading process was kind of soothing once I found my rhythm.
After it was smooth, I cut it into thirds and began to flavor and color the dough. I used the flavors banana, strawberry and orange with corresponding colors to match the fruits.
The next step was to make them look like hearts. I did not have a heart-shaped cutter. So, through trial and error, I worked on getting them to look as close to heart shaped as possible.
I first tried cutting them out with a knife. These hearts ended up too big. Then, I tried making them by hand and they looked a little funny. The method I found to work was rolling them into little noodles, folding them into hearts and then squishing them down.
After I finished making all of the hearts, I left them out to air dry for 24 hours.
The next day, I went to try the candies. They ended up tasting almost exactly like the store-bought candy hearts.
Taking the time to make these candies makes them a more sentimental gift. However, is it worth spending between $15 to $20 to make something you could have bought for $5?
It depends on your situation, but, for me, I would just buy candy hearts, especially while living in a dorm. There is not enough space for everything, and I got powdered sugar everywhere. My desk is still sticky from the sugar.
Plus, mine didn’t have cute messages written on them like the store-bought ones.
Making these candy hearts was a fun experience, but if you live in a dorm, I would not recommend this Valentine’s Day gift.