DIY Thursdays: Valentine’s Day Stained Glass Heart Cookies

These eye-catching cookies can be cut into any shape, just as long as you have the cookie cutter in two different sizes. If you don’t have a cookie cutter, that’s fine, you can simply just take a sharp knife and trace out any pattern that your heart desires.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 6-8 oz of Jolly Rancher hard candies (or you can substitute any of your favorite hard candies)

Equipment:

• Large and small cookie cutters (or a sharp knife)
• Silpat baking pad (or parchment or waxed paper)
• Baking sheet

Recipe:

First you will want to make the cookie dough…

1. In a small bowl, whisk the salt and flour together.
2. In a large bowl, beat the butter and the sugar together at medium-high speed until the mixture is pale and fluffy. The beat in the egg and the vanilla.
3. Add the flour/salt mixture to the butter/sugar mixture and mix at low speed until the mixture has combined.
4. Form the dough into 3 equal disks and individually wrap and chill the disks until they are firm. (This process will take approximately 2 hours)

Now it’s time to make the stained glass windows…

1. Crush your candies. Don’t worry about completely pulverizing the hard candies. The pieces will melt together during the baking process.
2. Cut out large shaped hearts (or whatever shape you desire). Working with one disk at a time, roll out your dough to about 1/8 inch thick. Make sure that you don’t forget to flour your surface and your rolling pin very well.
3. Transfer the cut out dough onto a baking sheet and cut out the centers. Don’t forget to use a Silpat pad, parchment paper, or waxed paper or it will be impossible to get the melted candy off of your baking sheet. If you are using a knife to cut out your shapes, make sure that they edges of your cutouts are smooth or the melted candies will bleed into the jagged edges.
4. Fill the center of the cookie cutout with crushed candy. Make sure that you do your best to keep the candy within the cutout window to eliminate color bleeding or sprinkles.

We are almost there…

Bake these cookies at 350 degrees until the edges have just a touch of golden brown. Any longer your cookies will be darker and harder and you will risk burning the candy.

Jessica Williams is Consolidated Credit’s Marketing Communications New Media Coordinator. As a member of the education team, Jessica focuses on helping consumers make better financial decisions while living debt-free. She has previously worked with Take Stock In Children, where she was a mentor and communications specialist, and SouthPromo.com, where she managed community relations, event planning, marketing, and public relations. Jessica attended both the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida where she received her B.S. in Interpersonal/Organizational Communications and Marketing. Connect with Jessica on Google+.