Dorie Greenspan/ Sweet

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

 

 

Thermoworks Specials

ThermoWorks Thermapen Mk4 Backlit

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12 Comments

  • Reply
    Zosia
    December 6, 2015 at 7:46 pm

    They look very festive and I do love that snowflake shape! But I agree that they're quite fragile. My kitchen was quite cool, as was the cookie dough, so I skipped the freezing step altogether – I think it made things a little easier.

  • Reply
    Diane Zwang
    December 8, 2015 at 5:42 am

    Good to know that it is a fragile dough. I will be making these later this week. Yours look amazing, nice shapes.

  • Reply
    Cher Rockwell
    December 8, 2015 at 12:16 pm

    The star cookie is stunning. Beautifully done!

  • Reply
    Nicole
    December 9, 2015 at 1:11 am

    So beautiful! Good to note about their delicacy…

  • Reply
    Nicole
    December 9, 2015 at 1:11 am

    So beautiful! Good to note about their delicacy…

  • Reply
    Jules Someone
    December 9, 2015 at 4:44 am

    Good to know about the green/brown. They are lovely!

  • Reply
    Peggy the Baker
    December 9, 2015 at 3:38 pm

    Your cookies came out so well! I didn't allow enough time to do anything quite so fancy with mine and while the dough was indeed very tasty, I ended up giving up on the stained glass for about half of them.

  • Reply
    Nana
    December 10, 2015 at 2:12 am

    They turned out beautiful and look so perfect. I had a lot of difficulty with these but they were good anyway.

  • Reply
    Approaching Food
    December 10, 2015 at 7:42 am

    Your cookies look rather fabulous! And reading your post, I realized I forgot to do an egg wash. Eh. Btw, your brown ones look just as great as the others!

  • Reply
    flour.ish.en
    December 10, 2015 at 11:24 am

    Don't let the look fool you. I abandoned the project midway. It was getting to be too tedious. I had difficulties as well.

  • Reply
    isthisakeeper
    December 11, 2015 at 10:29 pm

    I love the snowflake one….even brown. Very beautiful. These were tedious and messy…but I guess no one knows that except the baker. Looks great.

  • Reply
    Summer
    December 24, 2015 at 7:23 pm

    Your cookies look delicious, and fabulous! I had a lot of difficulty with this dough and can hardly imagine cutting out the amazing shapes you did, very nice!

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