I say this every year, but I can’t believe how fast Christmas creeps up! As soon as Halloween ends, all the stores pull out the Christmas displays and some of my neighbours already have their Christmas lights up on their houses. And I start baking cookies! I’m not much of a baker the rest of the year, but over the holidays I love to bake cookies and other goodies. One of our family’s favourite Christmas cookies is gingerbread. As soon as my kids see me making up the dough, they come over to help out. Picking out the cookie cutters and cutting out shapes in the dough seems to be everyone’s favourite part. I have a huge bag of various Christmas cookie cutters that I bring out for the kids to rummage through, and the kids all pick out their favourites.
I decided to try a spin on our usually gingerbread cookies by adding “stained glass” in the centres. We had a fair amount of candy left over from Halloween, so I had lots of lollipops and Life-savers to crush up to create the look of stained glass. It’s really easy to do, and best of all, the “glass” tastes delicious!
When you hold the cookies up to the light, you can see the lovely colours shining through. They’d actually make great decorations for your windows or tree – just add a hole to the top by sticking a straw in the dough before you bake them. That way, you can put ribbon or string through them for hanging.
It’s good to use a silicone liner when baking these, so you can peel the cookie with melted candy off the sheet more easily. Trudeau gave me one of their silicone liners to try, and they worked perfectly for these cookies. The star and circle shaped cookie cutters also came from Trudeau. If you want to win some of their bakeware, please check out my Instagram contest.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup butter
- 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup fancy molasses
- 1 egg
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 3 tsp gingerbread spice blend
- 8 ounces (approx.) crushed fruit-flavoured hard candies or lollipops (enough to make about a cup of crushed candy)
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl, beat together softened butter and sugar until creamy.
- Add molasses and egg, and continue to beat for about 3 minutes on medium speed.
- In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and spice.
- Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet mixture, while mixing on low speed.
- Once the mixture forms a stiff dough, separate it into two portions and wrap them in plastic wrap.
- Refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Roll out the cold dough on a well-floured surface until the dough is about 1/4" thick.
- Cut out shapes of cookies and cut out a shape in the centre of each cookie where you'll place the crushed candies for stained glass.
- On silicone-lined or parchment-line baking sheets, lay out the cookies.
- Spoon crushed candy into the middle of the cookies (you can use more than one colour next to each other for a multi-coloured look).
- Bake at 375F for 6-8 minutes, until candies are melted and bubbling.
- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
https://foodwhine.com/2016/12/stained-glass-gingerbread-cookies.html
Welcome to this very special Canadian Cookie Collaboration between the Canadian Food Creatives and the Canadian Christmas Cookie Exchange. #CDNFoodCreatives
Visit these Canadian Bloggers to save all of these sweet holiday cookie recipes:
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- Coconut shortbread Sandwiches by Taylor at The Girl on Bloor
- Crispy Spicy Almond Roccoco Italian Cookie Recipe by Maria at She Loves Biscotti
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- Eggnog Madeleines by Samantha at My Kitchen Love
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- Jewish Shortbread Cookie Pie by Jo-Anna at A Pretty Life in the Suburbs
- Nanny’s Molasses Cookies by Laura at Bluenose Baker
- Peppermint Macarons by Cristina at I Say Nomato
- Sablés Bretons with Chocolate Caramel Beurre Salé by Hilary at Cocoa Bean, the Vegetable
- Stained Glass Gingerbread Cookies by Megan at Food & Whine
- Thumbprint Caramel Shortbread Cookies by Kacey at The Cookie Writer
- Toasted Flour Sablés by Kimberlie at The Finer Cookie
- Triple Chocolate Pistachio Cookies by Marie at Food Nouveau
- Whole Wheat Dark Chocolate Ginger Crisps by Melanie at The Refreshanista
Sharing is caring! Please post on social media if you like with the hashtag #CDNFoodCreatives!
My kids like to whine, especially when it comes to the food they eat, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to make tasty and healthy meals for them. Follow along as I share family-friendly recipes and reviews from my picky family members, who I lovingly call “The Whine Critics.” 
