Valentine’s Treats: Stained Glass Cookies

We have Actually Mummy sharing a 31 Days of Love post with you today.. she is an “avid non crafter” and it my mission to convert her (or at the very least her daughter, mwahahahaha). Today she shares some yummy “Stained Glass Cookies”, kids LOVE making these, and we are so having ago! In case you are just catching on the seires, check out the Valentine’s Cards, Valentines Gifts that Kids can Make and the other Valentines Treats ideas.

I couldn’t resist having a go at this Guest Post too.. and here is our Stained Glass Cookie effort. We used our no egg “family recipe” and I share some top tips of what I learnt whilst making these over on Life At The Zoo!

Crafting is not my cup of tea, as many of you know, but I do like to mark the key events of the year with my children, and when it comes to Valentine’s, it’s all about the food for me. And nothing could be simpler or more effective than these ‘stained glass’ biscuits. We make them at Christmas to hang on the tree, but they’re perfect with a heart-shaped cookie cutter for a Valentine’s treat.

Stained Glass Biscuits Ingredients:

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• half tsp vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• 450g plain flour
• 1 bag of clear fruit boiled sweets

Set the oven to 170C

How to make stained glass biscuits:

Separate the sweets into colours, place in sealed plastic bags, and bash with the end of a rolling pin, or a pestle, until broken into chunks. Mix the butter and sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla and salt and mix in. Gradually add the flour and knead to a smooth dough. Cover with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes, or until firm enough to roll easily.

On a floured surface, roll the dough to around 5mm thick, and cut out various sizes of heart shape.  Your cutters need to be fairly big, to allow room for a hole in the middle. Stamp out holes in the middle of each biscuit – if you have a small heart cutter, you could use that, otherwise a bottle top works well.

Lay the biscuits on a baking-paper covered tray. Fill each hole with a different colour of the broken sweets – don’t overfill or the hot sweets will bubble over the edge and stain the biscuit. Bake for 10-12 minutes until pale golden and firm to the touch. The sweet shards will melt in the heat of the oven, firming up once cooled, to leave a clear coloured “glass” in the centre of the biscuit.

Leave on the baking trays until quite cold, at which point you can peel them away from the parchment with no fear of breaking the glass. These biscuits make perfect gifts, and look lovely wrapped in clear cellophane paper, tied at the top with ribbon.