Secret Santa is Back ~ Stained Glass Cookies | Merry X Mas & A Happy New Year

            Secret Santa is Back ~ Stained Glass Cookies | Merry X Mas & A Happy New Year

Thank you all for visiting my small little space, this year has been good for me. I started blogging one and a half years back and I am simply enjoying every minute spent on this space. I believe in learning and sharing and this space is an outlet for me to share my tried and tested recipes and some culinary experiments from my kitchen. I feel blessed to come across so many like-minded bloggers. I personally feel way to go and lots to learn still from this ocean of food blogging.

Xmas has been always special, my kids every year get Xmas gifts from Secret Santa :). This year is no different and they will again wait for some special gifts for them. I love the colorful Xmas tree, cookies and some special cakes during this time.

My daughter had to take some gift in school because all the kids play the Secret Santa game just before Xmas. Secret Santa is an age-old tradition wherein everyone buys a gift, picks a slip from the stocking and gives the gift to the recipient named there. The concept is to give the gift without knowing who will benefit from your gift.  After this they have a school Xmas party.

For this years Xmas party I baked her Choco chip cookies for her friends and teachers. In fact I made so many chewy Choco chip cookies, tutti frutti cake, banana walnut loaf along with these beautiful and delicious Stained Glass Cookies for both my kids. Some they took to school for the Xmas party and rest they enjoyed at home.

My kids love the M&M Cookies and the Snicker filled Chocochip cookies that I bake for them regularly.

It’s so much fun to bake these stained glass cookies, I love the colored Poppins/candies in this recipe and the result is wow. My kids loved these cookies. The first time I baked these few months back, I use the parchment paper and my cookies got stuck from the candy portion so this time I used the silicon sheet to bake these and my cookies came perfect without getting stuck from the bottom.

Here is the recipe for these lovely stained glass cookies, the cookies are glass like from the centre and soft from the outer edges. I feel these cookies are too good to bake for some occasions as these make the kids happy too with the colorful look and if you hang them as decorations then it is like an icing on the cake!

Recipe adapted from simplyrecipes.com and these cookies turned out lovely, thank you Elise, my kids loved these cookies!

Ingredients

• • All Purpose Flour – 2 cups
• • Butter – ½ cup
• • Sugar – ½ cup
• • Brown sugar – ¼ cup
• • Jaggery - 1 tablespoon
• • Vanilla essence – ½ teaspoon
• • Egg – 1 large
• • Salt – ¼ teaspoon
• • Baking powder – ¾ teaspoon
• • 30-40 hard candies – I used Poppins ( all colors)

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 190 degree C and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. I prefer silicon baking mat for baking these cookies.
2. Take a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy using an electric mixer.
3. Add Jaggery and vanilla essence to the butter sugar mixture. Mix well until its incorporated.
4. Now add in egg and mix well until light and smooth, about 1 minute on medium speed.
5. In another bowl sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder and mix it well.
6. Mix dry ingredients into wet mixture. Mix it gently until the flour is incorporated well.
7. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least for an hour before you start baking the cookies.
8. Take poppins candies and put the same color in one plastic bag and crush the candies using a mallet. Keep all the colors candies crushed separately.
9. Now take out the dough from the refrigerator and roll the dough to form the cookies approx. to ¼ inch thickness.
10. Use cookie cutters to cut dough into desired shapes. I used various shapes of cookie cutters to shape the cookies and transfer cookies to prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart.
11. Now with a smaller cookie cutter or a knife, cut shapes into centers of cookies.
12. Use a spoon to sprinkle the crushed candy into the hollowed-out centers of the cookies, filling to the edges. Ensuring the crushed candy is on spread out from the hollowed out center. If the candy is spread over the cookie dough it will change the color of the cookie when baked and won’t look neat. So be little careful while adding in the crushed candies into the centers.
13. Now poke a small hole in the top of each cookie before baking it using a toothpick, this will help you to hang these cookies in your Xmas decorations or on the Xmas tree.
14. Bake these for 8 to 10 minutes depending on your oven. You will see the candy melting and the remove the cookies when they begin to brown.
15. Remove the cookies along with the baking sheets from oven and place on wire racks to cool. Allow these cookies to cool on the baking sheet or tray for at least 10 minutes else the candy centers may separate from the dough. It needs to be fully cooled and set only then the entire candy will be ready. On cooling remove these cookies and store in an airtight container.
16. Your Xmas cookies are ready, string with ribbon or simply eat them if you can’t wait :).
17. Se the removed extra dough to bake some simple cookies of different shapes as I did and poke them too and use as your Xmas decorations.