Jack O’ Lantern Stained Glass Cookies
Have you seen where several people have made the stained glass Christmas cookies?
Well this is the Halloween version of that, and how stinking cute are they? These would make for a great little Halloween treat for a party or just for fun.
Ingredients
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 (2 sticks) cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Orange food coloring
Powdered sugar or flour, for rolling
Jolly Rancher or Lifesavers hard candies, approximately one candy per cookie
Cookie Cutter (ones used HERE)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk together dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- In a mixing bowl, blend the butter and sugar until creamy and light. Add egg, almond extract, and vanilla extract. Mix well. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Dough may be a little crumbly.
- Turn out the dough onto a surfaced sprinkled with powdered sugar or flour. Press into a ball and then roll out to ¼ inch thickness. Use cookie cutters to create shapes. Carefully lift shaped cookies to the baking sheet. Using a flat spatula is recommended to help the cookies maintain their shape.
- Separate Jolly Rancher or Lifesavers hard candies by color and place inside a quart-sized freezer bag. Place all bags into a larger gallon-sized freezer bag. Sandwich the gallon-sized freezer bag between two towels and beat candies with the flat side of a meat mallet until crushed. Candy will pierce BOTH bags so be prepared.
- Scoop candy pieces into the cut opening of each cookie. The crushed candy should fill most of the hole and mound a little on top. Depending on the size of your opening, you will use the equivalent of approximately 1 candy for each cookie.
- Bake cookies for 7 to 9 minutes. Do not brown the cookies. Allow cookies to cool for at least 20 minutes on the baking sheet before carefully removing to a cooling rack.
- Store in an airtight container between layers of parchment paper to keep the candy from attaching to the candy in other cookies.
IMPORTANT: Do not crush the Jolly Rancher candies prior to using as they will adhere to one another and become a hardened mass of candy. Also, if the dough is rolled too thin, keeping the cookies together while moving them to a baking sheet will be very difficult. Using a flat cookie spatula will help but make sure the cookie dough is at least ¼ inch. Thicker cookies will require more crushed candy. A basting brush can help keep the tiny piece of candy inside the cookie opening.
