Easy Heart Eye Emoji Valentine’s Day Treats

When I first got an iPhone last winter, I thought emojis were silly. The occasional smiley face? Fine. But a whole library of emojis that basically made your texts look like a kid’s coloring book? I’ll pass. Fast forward about a year and I might just be the worst emoji offender there is. Feeling happy? There are about 300 emojis for that. Running late? Just text the running man combined with a car. Hungry for cheese and taco? Just send an emoji. WHY AREN’T THERE cheese and taco emojis? (Sorry for shouting, but it’s necessary). But out of all these emojis, the worst offender that I make use of is the heart eye emoji. See food on Instagram that makes you want to eat your screen? Heart eye emoji. Someone send you a picture of a cute puppy? Heart emoji. See a picture of a million jars of sprinkles? Triple heart emoji. Whatever the question, heart emoji is the answer.

So I thought I’d whip up some easy Valentine’s Day treats using mini yellow plates and simple finger foods. I found about 10 boxes of jello in my pantry during a huge clean-out a few weeks ago, and decided to put it to use. All I did to create the heart eyes was make jello jigglers (based on the instructions on the box), let them set overnight, and then cut them out with a mini heart cookie cutter. I like to spray the glass pan with nonstick cooking spray before pouring in the jello to allow for them to come out of the pan easier. To fill this 6×9″ pan, I used a 6oz. box of strawberry Jell-o and 1 1/4 cups of water. (In order for them to cut out easily, you want to be sure to use the recipe on the box for jello jigglers and not regular jello – or they will be too soft.)

To create the mouths, I simply cut store bought chocolate cookies in half. The ones seen here are Keebler Grasshopper cookies, which are basically the same as Girl Scout thin mints. But you could use any kind of homemade or store bought chocolate cookie for these.

These little bite-sized treats wouldn’t be enough to fill you up, but would be fun for a pre-dessert place setting to hold over your guests before you whip out the cake. And if you’re up for a mess, this would also make a fun Valentine’s Day activity for kids. Have the adults cut the cookies in half beforehand and let the kids go at it with the cookies cutters to create their own plate art.

Materials & Product Sources:
6.75″ Round Yellow Plates  //  Red Jello  //  Chocolate Cookies
1″ Heart Cookie Cutter  //  Pink Striped Treat Bags  //  Candy Wands (order via her Instagram page)

So the real question of the day is: what is your favorite/most used/most overused emoji? If only I could figure out a way to embed emojis in the comments section of this blog, we could really have fun with this.