In this Instructable, I am going to show you how to make stained glass cookies. This easy homemade stained glass cookie recipe is awesome and only requires 7 ingredients! They can also be made into ornaments for the Christmas tree if you like. Follow the same technique to make stained glass windows for gingerbread houses. The glass is made from hard candy like jolly ranchers. Making stained glass cookies from scratch is super simple to do, if I can do it, you can do it, let's get baking!

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Follow the easy steps below or watch the video tutorial or do both. :)

Step 1: Ingredients and Tools

Ingredients:

3 cups of all-purpose flour (360g)
1/2 tsp. of salt (2g)
1 cup of softened room temp butter, unsalted. If you use salted reduce the salt in half (226g)
1 cup of white granulated sugar (200g)
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract (7ml)
20 to 30 jolly ranchers/hard candy, smashed

Tools:

Bowls
Hand mixer or stand mixer
Spoon
Spatula
Bags
Rolling pin
Meat tenderizer, optional, for mashing the candy
Sheet pan or cookie sheet
Parchment paper or a silicone baking mat
Cookie cutters

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Step 2: Dry Ingredients

The cookie part is just a basic recipe that requires only 6 ingredients. Add the flour and salt to a medium bowl and whisk them together.

Step 3: Cream Wet Ingredients

In a large bowl, add the softened room temperature butter and the white granulated sugar and mix until just combined. Mix in the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla extract. Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed with a spatula.

TIP: A stand mixer with a paddle attachment works great as well as a hand mixer. If you don't have a mixer, use a sturdy whisk or wooden spoon.

Step 4: Finish the Dough

Add in the flour mixture a third of it at a time until it is all mixed in. And just like that the easy cookie dough is finished.

Step 5: Chill the Dough

Place the dough on a table or counter, you may need a little bit of flour on the surface. Then shape the dough into a disc or rectangle and wrap with plastic wrap. Store the dough in the fridge for about an hour. It is important that the dough is chilled.

Step 6: Any Breaking Bad Fans?

While the dough is chilling you can smash up those hard candies. I like to use Jolly Ranchers because I like the flavors they have. Sort the individual colors and unwrap them, and place them in a sandwich bag. Then mash away with a meat tenderizer or rolling pin. You don't need to make a powder from it, just until the pieces are fairly small around a sixth of the size of a full one or something. Then I usually place them in little bowls for easy access.

Step 7: Roll Out the Dough

After the dough has chilled, remove it from the fridge and take off the plastic wrap. Flour the work surface and cut the dough in half and wrap back up one of the halves and place it back in the fridge. The dough can also be frozen.

Roll out the dough until it is between 1/4th and 1/8th of an inch. It doesn't have to be exact.

Step 8: Cut and Chill

Now time to make the cookie shapes. You can do pretty much whatever shapes that you want, with one large shape and one small shape in the middle.

After you use the cookie-cutter, pull away the scraps and ball those up to be re-rolled. Use a spatula as needed and place it on a cookie sheet lined with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

Then come in and use a smaller cookie cutter and remove the center. Which is where the candy glass will wind up going.

You can bake the inside piece of dough as is to make a small cookie, or just form them all together and re-roll to make more of the bigger ones.

Place the pan of cookies back in the fridge and allow them to chill for 15 to 20 minutes.

Step 9: Bake Those Cookies

Preheat the oven to 350 F/176 C.

Then use a small spoon and fill in the middles of the cookies with the candy pieces. Don't fill them up too much otherwise, they will bleed on the top. About 2 thirds full is great.

Bake them in the oven on the middle rack for 12 to 14 minutes, until the cookies are slightly golden brown and the candy melts. If you want the cookies softer, 12 minutes is about right, if you want them a bit crunchier and more brown, 14 minutes.

Allow them to cool completely on the pan.

Step 10: Ornaments

To make ornaments, there needs to be a hole in the cookies. Use a straw and poke out a hole, before baking. Then you can put a string or narrow ribbon on it so it can hang on the tree. :)