I found this recipe on One Little Project at a Time just in time for Valentine’s Day. The kids adored them, especially when they knew that the main ingredient was Gummy Bears.
Gummy Bear Heart Cookies
First of all, I want to say how great these went over. But sadly, they weren’t without fail. I’ll share my personal pitfalls and tips further down. I hope you give them a try. I’m giving the over all recipe 9 stars.
The cookie itself was similar to a shortbread. It was slightly bland but this wasn’t a hardship since the gummy bears offer a punch of flavor. The two balanced each other nicely. However, the cookies were extremely crumbly, so make sure your sweethearts enjoy these over a plate.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter, softened
- ⅔ cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg yolk
- 2¼ cups flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 24 gummy bears, cut in half
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 375F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone liners.
- In a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg yolk, and mix until smooth. Add the flour and salt, and mix to form a thick dough.
- Roll the dough into one inch balls and place on prepared baking sheets. Use your finger to press down twice on each ball, making a heart-shaped indent. Place two gummy bear halves into each indent in a v shape.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes, or until the cookies are just slightly golden at the bottom and the gummy bears are melty. If the gummy bears do not melt all the way, use a toothpick to gently spread them throughout the indent in the cookie.
- Cool completely before eating.
A dose of reality! While these cookies were super yummy, they were also a bit on the messy side. I encourage you to check out the blog where I had first found the recipe (the link is at the top of this page). She offers several pictures and a tip for working with gummy bears when they don’t melt all the way. Clearly, that was NOT my problem. Lol
Tips:
I used the Kroger gummy bear brand. The flavors were fantastic. I don’t recall gummy bears having different flavors but maybe I had never slowed down to taste them when I was younger.
If you’re using the Kroger brand, you’ll want to know that these melt REALLY well as you can tell from the picture above. When I make these in the future, I plan to bake the cookies 1/2 – 3/4 of the way before adding the gummy bears.
I would also suggest baking one cookie solo to see how your candy melts before you pop the entire tray in the oven on good faith.
If you manage to melt your gummies, you’ll notice that the cookie soaks up a great deal of the liquid. I didn’t think the cookies would have baked all the way underneath this and was afraid I accidentally made a bread pudding…which I hate, by the way. I was surprised to see how dry and perfect they were once they cooled.
Clean up tip: If some of your gummies wind up on the tray, don’t fret. Just run hot water over the tray until all is melted off. For some strange reason, scrapping the cooked gummy bears wasn’t an option no matter how hard I tried. I left water running over the pan while I wandered off to answer a text message and came back to disappearing goo! I can’t tell you how thrilled I was since I was about to toss the entire tray.
Novel Quote:
In light of Valentine’s Day, I’m sharing a quote from the Queen of classic romance. 🙂 Enjoy!! Feel free to share your favorite Austen quote with me!
Christian Author: A.M. Heath 