Stained Glass Window Cookies

SUBMITTED BY: Kim Hogan PHOTO BY: Annette F

"These are cookies which have open spaces which are filled with crushed hard candy (yellow and red work best). When baked, the candy melts and gives the appearance of "stained glass"."

SERVINGS & SCALING

Original recipe yield: 3 dozen

USMETRIC

About scaling and conversions

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
40 fruit flavored hard candies

READ REVIEWS (31)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in vanilla and eggs.
In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt; add to egg mixture alternately with milk.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide strips and, on a well-buttered baking sheet, form into window frames.
Keeping the colors separate, place candy in plastic bags and crush with a meat mallet. Place crushed candies inside window frames.
Bake for six minutes, or until candy is just melted. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, until candy is hard. Carefully lift cookies off baking sheet with spatula.

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REVIEWS

MORE MEMBER REVIEWS

Reviewed on Dec. 21, 2003 by SINESSE

My mother and I loved making these cookies! We took the advice from the reviewer who recommended increasing the sugar to 1 and 1/4 cup, cutting the milk down to about 3 Tablespoons, and boosting the vanilla to 1 teaspoon. Make sure you use lots of flour while rolling out. Keep the dough chilled. There is no need to break the candy up, unless you want to combine colors; we found that both lifesavers and jolly rancher candies melted completely just as they are. DO use aluminum foil instead of putting the cookies directly in the cookie sheet. DO spray Pam on the foil. The cookies will come off the foil easily once they are cooled. And you can re-use that foil, too, for a second round. Finally, we increased our baking time to about 10 minutes. At 6 minutes, the dough was not quite done to our taste. A truly beautiful (and tastey) result!

22 users found this review helpful

Reviewed on Dec. 6, 2003 by TYM4COFFY

I used this recipe with stars at Christmas...I found that using the lifesavers-R five flavors works better than the black cherry rolls...also I used aluminum foil on my baking sheets. This kept mess to a minimum, and made it easy to transfer cookies off the sheet so I could use the sheet for the next batch. They peel off the aluminum very easily when they cool.

18 users found this review helpful

Reviewed on Nov. 7, 2003 by JUBIE66

After reading the other reviews, I decided to make these cookies, but keeping in mind that some people found the dough sticky and a bit bland, I increased the sugar by about 1/4 cup, cut the milk down to about half the suggested amount, and increased the vanilla to about 1 teaspoon. I added the last cup of flour at the end and then used lots of flour on my rolling surface to stop them from being too sticky. They turned out great, and my kids loved them! I did large star shapes with smaller star cut outs in the middle, and found I needed 2 Jolly Ranchers to have the "windows" look really full. Try using 2 different colours of candy in one cookie--it's a great effect!

16 users found this review helpful

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