Stained Glass Holiday Cookies

An everyday cookie jazzed up and transformed into a holiday treat, imbued with seasonal theme, is what this stained glass cookie is all about. Ideal for giving. That’s the intent at the start. The recipe came from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi.

Making cookies, let alone decorating them, does not happen too often in my kitchen. But when you are in the holiday spirit, this project can be fun.

Not so much fun when you try to be ambitious, like using a large cookie cutter with an intricate pattern. The saying goes: “When ambition ends, happiness begins.” What was I thinking?

Consider having to make clean cutouts, filling the cutout windows with crushed candy while keeping everything intact in one piece. That can be nerve wracking.

Dorie recommends freezing the rolled-out dough for at least an hour before cutting. The temperature and texture of the cookie dough has to be at its sweet spot: stiff enough not to crumble and soft enough to be cut into the preferred shape. That requires ton of patience. Forget about dexterity and skill and grace.

This cookie dough is not the most forgiving. It’s fragile to the touch and crumbles easily, before and after baking. The finished cookies won’t withstand handling or packaging. They are jolly good tasting cookies, nonetheless.

The recipe follows a typical 1-2-3 cookie dough, with one part sugar, two parts butter and three parts all-purpose flour. If I have to make more stained glass cookies with elaborate patterns, I’d have to find a sturdier dough! May be adding eggs or other binding agents. Any suggestions?

I want to find out how other bakers have experienced this dough, check TWD blogroll for details.

Crushed Life Savers produce stained glass effect

Green crushed candies turned brown after 10-min baking