David Cohen doesn’t bake, but every now and then I do. I found a NYT recipe for Stained Glass Christmas Cookies and tried it. It was a lot of work, but the cookies do look like stained glass windows.
The recipe starts with a basic sugar cookie recipe. The cut-out cookies are placed on parchment-papered baking pans and then a hole or shape is carefully cut out. In that hole you sprinkle chopped up multi-colored candy and bake. The parchment paper keeps the cookie and melted candy from sticking.
I used Jolly Ranchers, as suggested by the recipe. I doubled the recipe, figuring if I was making a big mess, I might as well. The most difficult part was separating, unwrapping and smashing the five different colors individually. Plus, we don’t like fruity Jolly Ranchers (this means we still have a lot of these cookies left!). I made half the double batch as directed by the recipe and turned the rest into frosted sugar cookies which we do like and they are all gone.
If I repeat this recipe, I might use multi-colored Life Savers or some of those mint/wintergreen holiday-ish hard candies that are available this time of the year. They come in red, pink, green and white which would likely yield the stained-glass look.
