I have been wanting to make the cookie equivalent of those candy conversation heats for some time now. You know the ones I mean, they have the taste and texture of chalk, but are kind of cute.
When I went to buy some for the photo shoot, I discovered that SweeTarts also make a version of conversation hearts, and if you’re a fan of that mouthwatering fusion of sweet and tart, you’ll love them. 
I was thinking of doing an iced cookie, and piping the messages on them, but my fine motor skills aren’t precise enough for detailed piping and besides, my #1 valentine doesn’t like iced cookies. So, onto plan B. I remembered seeing these cookie letter stamps online.
Even though these are a novelty cookie, I still wanted them to be as delicious as possible. I thought I would try making them with a shortbread cookie dough. I used Mindy Segal’s recipe from her exciting and edgy new book, Cookie Love. After making the dough, I rolled it out using my new precision sticks. These have changed my life. I have always had difficulty rolling dough evenly, and then I was reading an article by cookie maven Dorris Greenspan. She was talking about these dough rolling sticks. They come in 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch and 1/16 inch thicknesses. They are genius in their simplicity.
After rolling out dough between 2 sheets of parchment, I froze the sheet of dough before cutting out the hearts. 
I stamped the cookies with their messages before baking, but as soon as they were done I realized that would not work. The cookies puffed up a bit during baking and the letters were not crisp and clear anymore. I decided to try stamping the cookies immediately after baking, before cooling, while they were still soft. To make it manageable, from a timing perspective, I only baked 6 cookies at a time, so that the cookies would not harden before stamping. 
These cookies are both adorable and delicious. I was thrilled with the results.
Click here to print recipe for Sweet Talk Shortbread Hearts.
Just love those cookie stamps
Thanks Shelley. They were so much fun to make.
They look so cute! And tasty!
Thanks Lynnie. I’m missing you!!
These are so adorable and I love the fun photos. I use to love these candies..actually I still do!
Thanks Linda. Do you love the chalky ones, or the SweeTart ones?
These look so yummy, Cindy. You are obviously much more hip than I am, I had to google what “SWAK” meant.
Thanks Dana! I’m not so hip. SWAK is very old school, from when people used snail mail!!
Adorable! I’ve used imprinting stamps for awhile and it never occurred to me to try stamping after baking for clearer letters! I am a little surprised that your letters blurred because I thought that with no rising agent, the cookies wouldn’t rise enough to blur the letters. The recipes I use for cookie molds and for imprinting all have no rising agents. But with your method, I can use any cookie recipe I want! 🙂 p.s. As an official act of being a crazy dog lady, my dog gave personalized dog biscuits (using imprinting letters) to his dog park buddies for Valentine’s Day. Yes, I do need a life. 🙂