Stained Glass Cookies
Updated Dec. 6, 2024
- Total Time
- About 1 hour, plus 2 hours’ chilling
- Prep Time
- 10 minutes
- Cook Time
- 50 minutes, plus 2 hours’ chilling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- ½cup/113 grams unsalted butter, softened
- ½cup/100 grams granulated sugar
- ¼cup/30 grams powdered sugar
- ¾teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
- 1large egg, plus 1 egg yolk
- 1tablespoon vanilla extract
- ½teaspoon baking powder
- 2cups/260 grams all-purpose flour, plus more as needed for rolling
- ½cup crushed hard candies (such as Jolly Ranchers; see Tip)
Nutritional analysis per serving (30 servings)
81 calories; 3 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 11 grams carbohydrates; 0 grams dietary fiber; 4 grams sugars; 1 gram protein; 45 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
To a large bowl, add the butter, granulated sugar, powdered sugar and salt. Using an electric mixer, beat on medium-high until light and creamy, about 3 minutes.
- Step 2
Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla and mix until just combined. Beat in the baking powder, then add the flour and mix until just combined. (Make sure to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl to ensure even mixing.) The dough will be thick and soft. Gather the dough, pat into a round about ½-inch thick and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours and up to overnight.
- Step 3
When the dough has chilled, heat the oven to 350 degrees and line 2 large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Arrange racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven.
- Step 4
Working with half of the dough at a time and keeping the other half wrapped and refrigerated, roll it out on a lightly floured surface to a ¼-inch thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut the cookies into whatever shapes you like, then transfer them to the baking sheets using a thin spatula, spacing them an inch apart. Use a smaller cutter to cut out the centers of the cookies. If at any time the dough becomes too soft to work with, refrigerate for a few minutes and then try again.
- Step 5
Gather the dough scraps and pat together to form another ½-inch-thick round. Rewrap and refrigerate while you roll and cut the other half of the dough as you did the first half. Combine all the scraps, chilling for a few minutes if necessary, then reroll and cut the dough once more, filling the remaining space on the baking sheets; discard any scraps.
- Step 6
Fill each cutout with crushed candies (see Tip) until full but not overflowing; they will melt and spread in the oven. Bake the cookies until light golden at the edges, 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the baking sheets and swapping racks halfway through. If the candy centers have large bubbles when you remove the sheets from the oven, use a skewer to very carefully stir the molten candy until smooth.
- Step 7
Cool the cookies completely in the pans set on a wire rack. (Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. Depending on the humidity in the room, the candy centers may become sticky.)
- To crush the candy, unwrap and divide them by color, then place into separate resealable plastic bags. Use a mallet or rolling pin to crush the candies into fine pieces.
Private Notes
Comments
I used gummy bears instead of jolly ranchers and they were sooo good. I used a higher end one from sprouts.
I’m sure these are beautiful but can anyone comment on how the candied centers turn out texture-wise once cooked/cooled/hardened? I would worry about a very hard candy center when biting into an otherwise easy-to-bite cookie. Wouldn’t seem like a welcoming mix of textures.
I read all the comments before I baked these. I was taking them to cookie-themed holiday party and I wanted to avoid becoming known as the person who caused a tooth to break so I followed the advice of some lovely reader who suggested gummy bears. However, I wanted to make snowflakes and wanted blue and white stained glass. Turned out my local store had blue shark gummy fruit in the aisle with the fruit roll-ups. Grabbed those and did a bit of testing at home. They only needed about 2.5 min to melt well so I just removed the cookies from the oven when there was 2.5 min left and they turned out amazingly!!! Came off the parchment paper fine after cooling. I decorated the sugar cookie part with some lines of icing and sprinkles and the cookies won “Most Creative” at the party. The kids loved them! They are a bit sugary for the adults but they were gorgeous and unusual because of the stained glass snowflake in the middle (used a large and a much smaller snowflake cookie cutter). Thank you to the person who suggested gummy bears!!! It made me think about how I could be sale and creative.
I won my companies Pride Month Bake-Off with this recipe! Won the award for Most Creative. As others mentioned, the colours all just blend together and I couldn’t get the fancy rainbow swirl, so just keep that in mind. I split the dough into 3, coloured the dough red, yellow and blue, and then rolled it together and it made a really pretty rainbow swirl. I served them in a bowl filled with fairy lights to make the glass shine and it worked a treat.
Per other people’s comments, Life Savers work like a charm! Save yourself the clean up and roll dough in between two sheets of Press n’ Seal that you used to refrigerate the dough. To get the cookies not to stick on the baking sheets, use parchment paper sprayed with canola oil and do NOT try to scrape them off the sheet before they are cool and hard, or they will break! Really fun to make. Almost looked cooler when I didn’t swirl them with a toothpick. Mixed Life Saver colors together that blend well (would not turn to brown)!
Anyone know if I can refrigerate the dough for longer? Say 2 days?
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