Stained Glass Cookies-Yippppppeeeee!

Stained Glass name is obtained since the basic butter-sugar cookies are baked with little crushed hard-candy which spreads beautifully and gives a stained glass effect on cooling!

So its Deeba again! First time saw these cookies at her space-HERE! Awesome! I thank her with all my heart for being choooo chweeet to share her stuff (12 yrs of solid experience she has in baking!)

I also googled around a bit for recieving some help in my novicius attempt and it was truly an art accomplished post baking these, a feeling of content and some sort of therapy to my daily life!!
I got 33 cookies, big n small, from 2/3rd of the measure, all got over in a span of 3 days!!!!!

The other site I googled is goodhousekeeping.com, the cookie is HERE, they had the same moulds that I had on me, hence I opted to go for this design and a few tips.

The recipe is from Deeba's and the few tips I used from GHK shall write gradually by the end of this post.


Ingredients :
3/4 cup butter (at room temp)
1 cup fine / castor sugar
2 1/2 cups maida (all purpose flour)
1 egg beaten
1 pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
Hard candy - various colors crushed

Method :
:: In a big bowl, beat butter n sugar until fluffy, add vanilla, salt, beat for half a minute. Mix in the beaten egg and add all the flour, combine and gather to make a dough. Refrigerate for 30 minutes in a cling wrap. (Chill in three parts disc shaped for convinient rolling)
:: Pre-heat the oven to 170 C or 350F. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Keep the cookies ready on another foil as well.





:: Crush the candies and keep aside.

:: Take one disc from the fridge, roll out to 1/4th inch thickness, cut with the 3 inch cookie-cutter and place on the foil. Take a smaller cookie cutter 1 1/2 " and cut out the center, place the trimmings or cutouts in the fridge. Fill with half tsp of your choice of candy colour. (I did the first batch in this manner, later batches, I added the crushed candies post 7 mins baking and placed them back for additional 4 mins)





:: Bake for 11 mins @ 170 C or till the edges are golden brown, the crushed candies will bubble and spread neatly. Once time is up, take out from oven, after a minute, take the foil with baked cookies and place to cool on a dry surface or wire rack. In 3-4 minutes, the cookies will come off clean! Like shown aside.

Yeah I got a bit creative n tried twin colors, n succeeded too!! :D


**The other batches were baked @ 160 C as my oven got very hot. I also baked the cookies for 7 minutes, took them out, placed the 1/2 tsp crushed candy and placed back for another 4 mins. The reason being the candy part was turning out slight bitter due to longer baking, hence reducing candy bake time enhanced the flavour.




Nope these r n't stained glass!! The center cut out, I baked along, with a bit of sprinkles!! Howzaaattttt??










There were few more cookies which I treated the same as above....so varieties were available!!










The last batch, I used Mansi Desai's Idea-HERE. Have yet to try out her complete recipe..these were colorful n over in minutes!!!





Creative kicks I think!!






Store them in tight airtight jar!








Still contemplating!!! Don't...don ur apron n bake these..earn name, fame and see them all gone without vain!!!