Stained Glass Snowflakes

Bake a batch of stained glass cookies that are just as beautiful as it is tasty! Your child will get to test his hand at crushing hard candies to create an elegant translucent window inside a cookie, making a beautiful dessert or ornament. Shiny and scrumptious, these cookies will be the hit of any party.

What You Need:

• Your favorite sugar cookie recipe
• Snowflake cookie cutters in different sizes
• Plastic sandwich bags
• Drinking glass
• Flour
• Wax paper
• Rolling pin
• Clear hard candies
• Heavy knife
• Non-stick baking tray
• Small spoon
• Metal spatula
• Straw
• White frosting
• Butter knife

What You Do:

1. Help your child make the sugar cookie dough, wrap it with wax paper and freeze it for one hour.
2. While the dough is cooling, unwrap your hard candies and place them into plastic lunch bags, separated by color. Use the blunt end of a heavy knife to crush the hard candies into tiny pieces.
3. Remove the dough from the freezer and form small pancake shapes about the size of the palm of your hand, and place them on a well-floured flat surface. Show your child how to roll them out with a rolling pin, a fourth of an inch thick.
4. Pre-heat the oven according to the cookie recipe instructions.
5. Dip the snowflake cookie cutter in flour and press it into the dough. Then dip the smaller snowflake cookie cutter into the flour, stamp it into the center of the cookie and remove the center part of the snowflake. This is where your stained glass window will go!
6. Using a small spoon, scoop a spoonful of crushed candy into the center of the cookie. You can try pouring multiple colors side by side if you are very careful.
7. Repeat this until you have used all the dough. If it becomes too sticky to work with, place it back in the freezer.
8. Place a tray of cookies into the oven and keep a close eye on them. The candy center will melt and sink lower than the dough. As soon as the cookies are lightly browned, remove them from the oven.
9. Let the cookies cool, and use a metal spatula to remove the cooled cookies from the tray.
10. Carefully spread room-temperature frosting onto the cookie, avoiding the center.
11. Sprinkle the iced cookie with clear crystal or glitter edible sprinkles. Hang it up on a tree, or eat for a delicious treat!

If you would like to hang your cookies on the tree, before you place them in the oven, use a plastic straw as a cookie cutter and press it into the top of the cookie to create a hole.