How to Make Stained Glass Cookies

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Lay a silicone baking mat on each cookie sheet that you are using.

In a separate large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

In a large mixing bowl, add in the softened butter and mix it together on low for approximately 30 seconds. Then add in the sugar. Turn the mixer to medium and and creamy the butter and sugar together. You will want the combination to be a bit grainy. Your goal is for the butter and sugar to have a pale yellow color to it.

Slowly incorporate the egg and then the vanilla.

Then turn the mixer on low and slowly add the dry mixture into the cookie dough.

Continue mixing until all of the ingredients are thoroughly blended.

Make the dough into a flat circle and wrap it in cling wrap completely covering all of the dough. Then place the dough into the refrigerator for approximately one hour or until it's chilled.

Once the dough is chilled, pull it out of the fridge and let it soften up a bit.

Then on large cutting board, add a couple of tablespoons of flour onto the board and add about a 1/4 of your dough. You may also need to flour your rolling pin.

Roll the cookie dough to about 1/8 of an inch high. Using the large cookie cutter, cut out the large starts. Then using the smaller star, cut the little stars out of the middle of the cookies.

Using a spatula to move the cookies to the prepared cookie sheet.

Place the cookies in the oven and set the timer for six minutes. While the cookies are baking, unwrap the candies from the wrappers and set them aside.

When the timer goes off, pull the cookies out and place one candy in the open circle of the cookies.

Place the cookies back into the oven for 3 to 4 minutes or until you see the candy has melted.

Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 30 minutes. Then move them to a cooling rack.

MAKING THE ICING:

In a large mixing bowl, combine the whites of two eggs, powdered sugar, cream of tarter and the vanilla. Mix on medium speed until stiff peaks form (normally this takes around 5 minutes). If the icing still looks a little soupy, add a tablespoon of powdered sugar in at a time.

Then split the icing into three bowls. In one bowl, add in a few drops of the red gel icing. In another bowl add in the blue and leave one bowl white. A key tip when using gel colors, a lot goes a long way so add 1 to 2 drops at a time until you get your desired color.

Prepare your piping bags by placing the tip into the bag and cutting off the bottom of the bag so that the tip pushes through the bottom.

Scoop some of the icing into the 3 piping bags

Using the remaining icing in the bowls, add 2 TBSP water into the bowls to thin out the icing.

Pour the thinned icing into the squeeze bottles.

DECORATING DIRECTIONS:

Take your cooled stained glass cookies and set them onto the cookie sheet

Add a few sprinkles into the “glass” part of the bottom cookie

Take one of your piping bags and pipe on a line around the cookie part of the bottom cookie

Place another cookie on top of the bottom cookie so that the icing becomes a “glue”

Let the cookie sit for 30 minutes before decorating the top

Take the red piping bag and pipe a line on 1/3 of the top of the star

Using the White icing, pipe the middle 1/3 of the cookie

Using the blue icing pipe a line around the bottom of the cookie

Fill in the colors with the matching thinned icing colors

Let cookies dry for 2 hours before enjoying!