Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (2024)

by Debbie Chapman

Jump to Recipe

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy.

These stained glass cookies are a real showstopper! They’re SO PRETTY, but they’re actually incredibly easy to make. Simply crush up jolly ranchers and place them in the center of a sugar cookie before baking.

Impress your family and friends with these cookies that are beautiful and tasty, with no extra decorating required. It’s so cool how you can see through the center of these cookies, just like real stained glass windows!

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (1)

This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a small commission which helps us run this website.

Check out our Stained Glass Cookies video tutorial:

Looking for more sugar cookie decorating ideas? Here’s a few of our favourites:

Reindeer Sugar Cookies

Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies

Teddy Bear Cookies

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (2)

Print Recipe

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe

These stained glass cookies are so pretty and they're REALLY EASY to make. Impress your guests with these beautiful AND tasty sugar cookies!

Prep Time2 hours hrs

Cook Time12 minutes mins

Total Time2 hours hrs 12 minutes mins

Course: Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Baked, Cookies, Easy

Servings: 24 cookies

Author: Debbie Chapman

Cost: $5

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Gather your cookie ingredients and supplies.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (3)

  • Add the sugar, salt, vanilla, egg, and room temperature butter to a mixing bowl.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (4)

  • Combine the ingredients in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (5)

  • Add the all purpose flour and mix until the dough starts to clump together.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (6)

  • Transfer the dough to your working surface and knead briefly.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (7)

  • Cover your dough with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (8)

  • Unwrap two jolly ranchers and place them in a plastic baggie.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (9)

  • Use a hammer or meat mallet to crush the jolly ranchers into very small pieces. Powder is okay as well, but try and get rid of any large chunks.

    Repeat with other jolly rancher colours. Two jolly ranchers will fill 3 - 4 cookies, depending on your cut out size.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (10)

  • Add flour to your working surface. Place the dough on top and add a bit more flour on top of the dough.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (11)

  • Roll out the dough until it's just over 1/4 inch thick.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (12)

  • Use a cookie cutter to cut out star shapes, or whatever shape you'd like!

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (13)

  • Place the cookies on a parchment lined baking tray.

    You can also use a silicone mat, but you need to cover your baking sheet with something to stop the candy from sticking.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (14)

  • Cut out the centers of the cookies with a smaller cookie cutter of a similar shape.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (15)

  • Fill the center of the cookies with the crushed candies. Make sure they don't overflow; just add enough to cover the hole.

    Try and remove any pieces that fall on the top of the cookies prior to baking.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (16)

  • Preheat your oven to 350F and bake the cookies for 12 minutes.

    Allow the cookies to cool on the tray for 20 - 30 minutes, until the candy center has hardened.

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (17)

  • Your stained glass cookies are complete!

    Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (18)

Notes

Make sure you don't place these cookies on a paper towel or napkin, because the candy center will stick to it!

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (19)

Will any cookie dough recipe work to make stained glass cookies?

This sugar cookie recipe is perfect for making stained glass cookies because it doesn’t spread. If you have another favourite cookie recipe that doesn’t spread, feel free to use that!

Do I need to chill the dough?

Yes, chilling the dough before rolling it out and baking the cookies is an important step. Chilling the dough helps stop the cookies from spreading! It also makes it way easier to roll out the dough and cut clean shapes with the cookie cutters.

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (20)

What other candies can I use to make stain glass cookies?

You can use any hard candies that are semi-translucent. Try crushing up suckers, Life Savers, or even butterscotch candies!

Do the jolly ranchers make these cookies hard to eat?

No, the jolly rancher part of the cookie is thin enough that you can bite right into it. It might stick to your teeth a bit, but they’re definitely not too difficult to eat!

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (21)

How can I get rid of air bubbles in the center of the stained glass cookie?

Most of the air bubbles in the candy should disappear as the cookies cool. If you want to make sure all the bubbles are gone, keep an eye on the cookies as the candy begins to harden and pop the bubbles with a toothpick.

What size and shape of cookies can I make?

We cut out the main cookie from 3 inch star cookie cutters. The inside cut outs were 1-1/4 and 2 inch star shapes. You can definitely use whatever shape cookie cutters you’d like – as long as you have another one that fits inside!

Hearts would be so pretty for Valentine’s Day, while trees and gingerbread people are super fun for Christmas. Ornament shaped cookies also look great with different shapes inside, like a star or a snowflake.

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (22)

These stained glass cookies are perfect for Christmas parties, cookie exchanges, or really for any time of year.

You can also use these windowpane cookies as Christmas tree decorations! Simply poke a hole in the cookie with a straw or skewer before baking and then tie a ribbon to hang them.

Here’s even more sugar cookie decorating ideas:

Reindeer Sugar Cookies

Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies

Teddy Bear Cookies

Our bookLow-Mess Crafts for Kids is loaded with 72 fun and simple craft ideas for kids! The projects are fun, easy and most importantly low-mess, so the clean up is simple!

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (26)

Where to buy:

You can purchase Low-Mess Crafts for Kids from Amazon, or wherever books are sold:

Amazon |Barnes and Noble | Books- A- Million | Indiebound |Indigo |Amazon Canada

Previous PostDIY Macrame Coasters
Next Post How to Make Lotion

More from One Little Project

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (27)

About Debbie Chapman, the Author of this Post

I'm Debbie Chapman, founder of One Little Project and author of the book Low-Mess Crafts for Kids. I love creating fun and easy crafts and cooking up delicious recipes for my husband and 3 kids.

More by Debbie Chapman

Filed Under: Christmas, Cooking with Kids, Desserts and Sweets, Holidays, Just because it's fun!, Just for Kids, RecipesTagged With: Candy, Cookies, Easy Recipes, Jolly Ranchers, recipe, stained glass cookies, Sugar Cookies, sweets and treats

Love to cook, bake, craft, create?

Join the e-club for the latest

Reader Interactions

Let us know what you think:

Stained Glass Cookies Recipe | How to Make Stain Glass Cookies (2024)

FAQs

How long to bake cookies on glass? ›

Finally, fold in the chocolate chips. Drop rounded tablespoons of the cookie dough onto an ungreased glass tray, leaving enough space between each cookie for spreading. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly golden.

How do you shape cookies with a glass? ›

And sure, this does seem like a fun little hack to make your cookies look more uniform, or at least uniformly round. All you have to do is take the baked cookies from the oven, place a mug (or a glass) over the still warm dough, do a little swirl and voilà, perfectly round cookies.

What makes cookies light? ›

Using lower-moisture sugar (granulated) and fat (vegetable shortening), plus a longer, slower bake than normal, produces light, crunchy cookies.

How do you melt candy for stained glass? ›

What to do: Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Unwrap the candy and arrange the pieces on a baking sheet so that they're close together, but not touching. Bake the candy for 7 to 8 minutes, or until it has melted.

What are the rules for baking in glass? ›

This can result in uneven baking: By the time the interior is baked through, the exterior is often overcooked, dry, or dark. (Some bakers even recommend lowering the oven temperature by 25° when baking in glass to combat this problem.)

Do you bake longer or shorter in glass? ›

Then the glass retains heat far longer than metal will. Because of these properties, batter baked in glass often takes longer. At the same time, it's easier to over-bake brownies in a glass pan, because it takes longer for the center to cook.

How to adjust baking time for glass? ›

If the recipe you're following originally calls for a glass pan, just know you may need to shave 5 to 10 minutes off the baking time.

How do you rim a glass with cookies? ›

The trick to managing a cookie rim is to begin by moistening the rim of the glass with ingredients like simple syrup, honey or even Bailey's Irish Whisky Cream for that matter. All you need to do is then dip the glass rim into a plate of crushed or ground up cookies, rotating to ensure an even coating.

How do you store glass cookies? ›

Best Way to Store Stained Glass Window Cookies

You can store these cookies stacked in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 7 days. For longer storage, you can store them in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 10 days.

Why didn't my cookies hold their shape? ›

If your butter is under mixed, it won't have the air pockets to hold it's shape. If it's over-mixed, the air pockets decrease in size and are unable to hold their shape in the oven—causing your cookies to spread. It's best to cream butter and sugar on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes.

What is the best sugar for baking cookies? ›

Granulated sugar: Derived from either sugarcane or sugar beets, this is the most commonly used sugar in baking, and for good reason. It's neutral in flavor and has medium-sized, uniform crystals that are small enough to dissolve into batters and large enough to create air pockets when creamed with butter.

What happens if I put too much butter in cookies? ›

Too much butter makes cookies turn out just as you'd expect: very buttery. This batch of cookies was cakey in the middle, but also airy throughout, with crispy edges. They were yellow and slightly puffy in the middle, and brown and super thin around the perimeter.

What is the purpose of adding eggs to cookie mixture? ›

Eggs promote puffiness and spreading in cookies, while also holding the cookie together during baking. The height and texture of the final product is determined by how much egg is incorporated into the batter. Substituting ingredients can make or break a recipe.

How to melt Jolly Ranchers for glass? ›

Microwave the Jolly Ranchers at 80% power.

Initially cook them for approximately 1 minute. Microwaves will vary, so you will need to adjust based on your specific model. This should get all four pieces to melt in one go. If the candies do not melt entirely on the first heat, cook them again in 15-second intervals.

How do you make hard candy from hard crack to the glass transition? ›

To make hard candy, a sugar syrup is cooked to hard crack temperature (145°– 152°C; 295°– 305°F) to reduce water content to 1 to 3 percent. When cooled to room temperature, the highly viscous candy mass turns into a sugar glass with very low molecular mobility.

Will a window crack if you put a Jolly Rancher on it? ›

“Jolly Ranchers are far from a common cause for broken windows. In fact, there's not a clear consensus on whether they're able to break a car window or not.”

How long does it take a Jolly Rancher to dissolve in alcohol? ›

Place candies in a container with a lid and add vodka. Seal the container and place in a cool, dark place, shaking vigorously 1 to 2 times per hour, until candy has dissolved, 3 to 4 hours.

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Article information

Author: Twana Towne Ret

Last Updated:

Views: 5587

Rating: 4.3 / 5 (44 voted)

Reviews: 83% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Twana Towne Ret

Birthday: 1994-03-19

Address: Apt. 990 97439 Corwin Motorway, Port Eliseoburgh, NM 99144-2618

Phone: +5958753152963

Job: National Specialist

Hobby: Kayaking, Photography, Skydiving, Embroidery, Leather crafting, Orienteering, Cooking

Introduction: My name is Twana Towne Ret, I am a famous, talented, joyous, perfect, powerful, inquisitive, lovely person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.