craftgrrl | Stained Glass Cookies (Reply)

Here's a great twist on the sugar cookie for you crafty baking fiends like me. I found this suggestion on the back of a box of Krusteaz brand cookie mix.

You can use any sugar cookie recipe you please for this. You'll also do well with cookie cutters, big and rather small. The unusual ingredient you'll need are small hard candies. I used Jolly Ranchers last year as that was all I could find. YUCK! Don't do it. Just try to find generic, colored, fruit hard candies that come in several colors.

You'll want to smash the candies before making the dough. Don't smash until powder fine, but small, sunflower-seed sized bits. Then mix the dough and roll and cut your cookies into shapes that make you happy (I recommend circles and hearts as they're easy, but stars are nice if you can get them to work) The cookies ned to be at least 2-3 inches across for this to work.

Now, using a very small cookie cutter (1 inch or smaller), cut a shape into the center of the cookie. This dough can be re-rolled for more cookies. Now fill the holes with multi-colored candy bits. Ta-da! Bake on parchment paper so you don't get candy residue all over your nice cookie sheets and make sure the candy centers have hardened completely before removing.

Now you have beatiful cookies with stained glass centers. They make very cute gifts and people will probably admire them more than eat them. Happy baking!