The holiday season is the perfect time to bake my stained glass Christmas cookies! These bring joy and sparkle to my December every year, and they’re a wonderful baking project to do with kids.
Stained glass cookies are not only delicious, buttery sugar cookies but also eye-catching works of art that add a festive touch to your cookie exchange or holiday table. They are sometimes called church window cookies, and I’m sure you can see why! Stained glass cookies are simple to make but deliver maximum impact with their colorful candy centers.
These pretty cookies can take on a variety of shapes to suit your holiday theme. Use cookie shapes like stars, Christmas trees, or snowflakes for festive flair, or opt for different shapes like hearts or flowers for other occasions.
Whether you use Jolly Ranchers, Life Savers, or other hard candies, these stained glass cookies are as much fun to make as they are to eat. Gather your cutters, crush your candies, and let’s get baking!
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What are stained glass cookies?
Stained glass cookies get their name from their resemblance to the colorful glass windows you see in churches. They’re made by cutting a small hole in the center of the cookie and filling it with crushed candy that melts during baking, creating a translucent “glass” effect. Perfect for the holiday season, these cookies look stunning hung as ornaments on a Christmas tree or served on a platter at a Christmas party or cookie exchange.
Key tips for making stained glass cookies
- To make the best stained glass cookies, start with my simple old fashioned Christmas butter cookie dough. This classic sugar cookie dough is easy to work with and bakes to perfection. I don’t add vanilla extract to my butter cookies, but if you love it feel free to add a little. For those who love traditional holiday flavors, gingerbread cookies also make great stained glass cookies! Use my easy gingerbread cookie dough if you’d like to try that.
- Use unsalted butter to ensure that you control the saltiness of your cookies. If you start with room temperature butter and a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, creaming the butter and sugar will be a breeze.
- Once your dough is ready, roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper. This keeps the dough from sticking without needing excess flour (which affects the look and texture), and allows for even rolling.
- Use larger cookie cutters for the main shape and a smaller cookie cutter to create the center of the cookie, where the candy will go. You don’t have to use the same shape for the ‘windows’, either! Mix it up and try different cutters; a star inside a snowflake, a little circle inside a star, or whatever takes your fancy.
- If the dough becomes too soft to cut cleanly when you’re cutting out the shapes, chill it briefly in the refrigerator before proceeding. It’s a little extra waiting time, but you’ll be rewarded with sharper edges on your shapes and prettier cookies in the end.
Spread holiday cheer with more Christmas cookie treats for gifting:
Simple Old Fashioned Christmas Butter Cookies
The Best Easy Gingerbread Cookies Without Molasses
Choosing and crushing your candy
The candy centers are the highlight of stained glass cookies, so selecting the right type of candies is essential.
Jolly Rancher candies or fruit Life Savers work best because they melt evenly and come in vibrant colors. Avoid opaque or cloudy candies, as they won’t create the same stained glass effect. For the photographed cookies, I used Fox’s Glacier Fruits, which are available in Australia and the UK. Most types of transparent, colored hard candy should work.
To crush the candies, place separate colors into resealable plastic bag and use a rolling pin to break them into small, sugar-sized crystals. A few chunkier bits is ok, but the larger your pieces the longer they take to melt in the oven. When you’re baking smaller cookies this can mean the cookie overbakes before the candy has melted. Crushed candies can become sticky, so it’s best to use them soon after you crush them.
Step-by-step guide
As always, I’ve included a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post, with notes. Read on for the visual walk-through.
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Preparing your dough
- Cream the unsalted butter, sugar, and salt on medium speed until light and fluffy.
- Sift your flour into a separate bowl, and add the flour to the butter mixture until a dough forms. You want a dough that’s not too soft and sticky; add a little additional flour if you need to.
Rolling and cutting
- Roll the dough between sheets of parchment paper to your desired thickness.
- Use cookie cutters to create your cookie shapes, then cut a small hole in the center of the cookie for the candy centers.
Filling and baking
- Transfer the cookies to prepared baking sheets (I like a lined baking sheet for ease of removing the cookies later; parchment paper or silicone mats are equally good). Fill the center of the cookie with crushed candy, ensuring the candy is just level with the dough. Don’t overfill or the candy will run when it melts, and the edges of the stained glass windows won’t be neat.
- Bake cookies until the edges are golden brown and the candy centers are melted and glassy. Try not to let the candy start boiling in the oven, as it can make the stained glass bubbly and opaque. The baking time will vary depending on the size of your cookies but typically ranges from 15 to 25 minutes. I keep an eye on the first tray, then time the following ones to match.
Decorating and storing your cookies
For a touch of sparkle, sprinkle coarse sugar over the top of the cookie before baking.
Once baked, let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. The candy centers will harden as they cool, leaving you with beautiful stained glass window cookies.
Store your baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature. Humidity can cause the candy centers to soften, so if you live in a humid area, be extra vigilant about sealing the container. Properly stored, these cookies will last up to a week, making them ideal for gifting during the holiday season.
Stained glass cookies are just the best way to bring creativity into your holiday baking. Their vibrant candy centers, buttery cookie base, and festive designs make them a crowd-pleaser for all ages. Whether you’re making them for a cookie exchange or as gifts, these cookies are guaranteed to spread holiday cheer. So, grab your rolling pin, crush those candies, and enjoy making your own stained glass window cookies this holiday season!
Have you made and enjoyed this recipe? I’d love if you’d be kind enough to rate and review it via the stars in the recipe card, and leave a comment below! Ratings and reviews help other readers to find and understand my recipes from a reader’s perspective.
Stained Glass Christmas Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 3/4 cup superfine sugar caster sugar
- ½ teaspoon fine salt
- 2 cups all-purpose flour plain flour, sifted
- 20 hard candies different colored, unwrapped and crushed (see notes)
- 3 Tbsp coarse sugar for sprinkling
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F/165°C, conventional or convection setting. Line a couple of cookie sheets or baking trays with silicon baking mats or silicon paper and set aside.
- Put the butter, sugar and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on medium speed until light and creamy looking. The time this takes will vary depending on how soft your butter is to begin with, and how strong your mixer is.1 cup unsalted butter, 3/4 cup superfine sugar, ½ teaspoon fine salt
- While the butter and sugar are creaming, sieve the all-purpose/plain flour into a bowl.2 cups all-purpose flour
- Add the flour to the butter mixture in 2-3 batches, mixing on low speed just to combine each time. When all the flour has been added and the dough just comes together, turn it onto a lightly floured surface and knead lightly until it’s smooth. Don’t go overboard, you just want a cohesive mass that’s all the same color and consistency.2 cups all-purpose flour
- Roll portions of dough out between two sheets of parchment paper to your desired thickness (I like larger shapes to be about 3/8"/1cm thick and smaller shapes 1/2"/6mm thick). Remove the top sheet of parchment and cut out larger shapes with a small cutout in the center of each one. If you're finding the dough is too soft to cut clean shapes, refrigerate it for 15 minutes before cutting.
- Place the cut out shapes on lined trays, leaving ½”/1½ cm between each cookie. Use a teaspoon to transfer a small amount of crushed hard candy into the center cutout of each cookie. You need enough for it to fill the space, but don't pile it too high or it'll run and leak outside the edges of the cutout during baking. I prefer sticking with one color for each cutout; you can make multicolored stained glass but it tends to run and blend more than I like. Optional; brush a little beaten egg white or water on the outer border of the cookies and sprinkle with coarse sugar crystals.3 Tbsp coarse sugar, 20 hard candies
- Bake the stained glass cookies until firm to the touch and just beginning to color at the edges. This can take anywhere from 15-25 minutes, depending on their size.
- Cool the cookies on the baking trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. When completely cool, store in an airtight container.
Notes
- Which hard candies to use: I used Fox’s Glacier Fruits in the pictured cookies; they’re available in Australia and the UK. Any clear (not cloudy) colored hard candy should work. In the USA I’d recommend something like Jolly Ranchers. You can even use the little flat, colored lollipops (I think of them as ‘doctor’s lollipops’, because they’re ubiquitous in every doctors surgery I’ve ever taken my kids to!).
- Crushing the hard candies: The easiest and neatest way to crush the candy is to put a few same-colored, unwrapped candies in a ziploc sandwich bag and squeeze out excess air before sealing the bag. Bash the bag with a rolling pin to completely crush the candy into sugar-crystal-sized pieces. Repeat with the other colors, and use the candy soon after crushing so it doesn’t get sticky and clump together.
- The number of cookies this recipe makes will vary depending on the size and shapes of cutters you choose.
- These cookies will keep for up to a week, sealed in an airtight container at room temperature. I’ve had them last at least a couple of weeks if they’re individually packaged into little clear plastic bags and sealed well. I do not freeze them because I find the stained glass centers can become soft, and they ‘bleed’ into the cookie. Humidity is the enemy of stained glass cookies, so if you live somewhere humid be extra vigilant about sealing them after baking!
