Stained Glass Cookies

A crowd pleasing favorite; stained glass cookies.  These are amazing cookies to look at and even better to taste.  The only limit to the design of stained glass cookies is your own imagination and patience with a sharp knife, they can even be made as lollipops. These are the perfect cookies any time of the year whether it's Christmas ornaments, valentine hearts, spring flowers or fall pumpkins they make a gorgeous treat to see and a tasty one to eat.  

These can be made from many different cookie types as long as they bake quickly at a maximum temperature of 350˚.  That being said I prefer to use sugar cookies for several reasons.  They contrast really nicely with the bright candy colours, it's a cookie that doesn't seem out of place during other seasons, they are simple and never fail to turn out as well as being one of the easiest doughs to work with.  

This is a fairly large recipe and can be made in a half batch with out ill effects, but really who wants less cookies?  I do seperate the dough into two sections however and bake one section as regular sugar cookies and the other as stained glass.  There is no real reason for this other than I tend to run out of patience since I don't have many cookie cutters in multiple sizes and cut most of the windows out by hand.   

Stained Glass Cookies

Ingredients

2 cups softened unsalted butter

2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

6 cups flour

About 40 hard candies (I prefer life savers)

In a large bowl cream sugar and butter together until fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Sprinkle with salt and slowly add the flour to the mixture one cup at a time.

Separate the dough into two flattened disks, wrap with plastic wrap and place in fridge to chill minimum one hour (I tend to leave them overnight).

Preheat oven to 350˚

Roll out dough on a flat surface lightly dusted with flour to about 3-4mm. Cut out shapes remembering to cut out and area for the “window” and transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. An extra hint; if you plan on hanging any of the ornaments use a straw to make a small hole at the top of the cookie.  

Separate hard candies into separate plastic bags by flavour.  Crush with a rolling pin.

Fill the open spaces in the cookies with one flavor of hard candy each.   

 Bake for about 10 minutes until cookies are fluffy or just beginning to brown.

Allow cookies to cool for at least ten minutes before removing from the parchment paper and enjoy.

One More

I opened the pantry just a few minutes ago to grab a cookie. It seems that perhaps I don’t really need another cookie.  

I now recall exactly why I don’t tend to buy packages of cookies very often.  Sitting in my pantry right now are two packages of oh so very yummy cookies, one of which seems to be disappearing at a rather alarming rate. 

The problem of course is that I didn’t make them and therefore they are much better than anything I could have.  I make some good cookies and a few that are great but nothing tastes as sweet as a snack you didn’t have to make yourself.

They sit on the other side of the pantry door calling out to me each and every time I walk by. “One more, won’t hurt” they call out “try us were soft, chewy and sweet”.

I am but a simple servant to the calling of such wondrous temptation, alas one more cookie shall not be a grievance but rather it shall enhance the glorious flavor of life!

Sorry went all Shakespearey for a moment there, must be the sugar high. 

I can thankfully get away with a little indiscretion once in awhile as I have the great gift of a fast metabolism.  Be that as it may, it isn’t quite as fast as it used to be and if I would like to avoid some waist expansion I must avoid this trap of ‘just one more’.

There is no such thing as just one more, unless the package is empty, and it’s not……….yet