One of my friends has been asking me to make him stained glass cookies forever.  It has turned into a running joke between us.  When I heard he got engaged, I knew that I could not show up to his engagement party without these cookies.  The only problem was that I had never made stained glass cookies before.  After a little bit of research I learned that all I needed was sugar cookie dough and some hard candies and voila!

I rolled out sugar cookie dough on the thinner side (my recipe puffs up a bit) and cut out large heart shaped cookies.  Then I cut a medium heart out of the large one and set it aside.  From the medium heart I cut out a  small heart out and placed it inside the large heart.  I filled the gap in with crushed hard candy and filled the medium hearts with the hard candy as well.  I chose red hard candies because it also happens to be Valentine’s Day, but any color would work.

I recommend rolling out, cutting out, and adding the crushed candy to these cookies directly on parchment paper so you don’t need to use a lot of flour underneath.  This should help candy from melting underneath the cookies as they bake.  Transfer the whole sheet of parchment paper with the prepared cookies to a baking sheet.  Then  bake  at 350°F for 8-10 minutes.  As the cookies bake, the hard candies melt and spread into a gorgeous thin glass layer.  Please allow them to cool before handling because they are super hot!

These are the classic stained glass cookies aka window cookies.  They are cute and all, but I had to take them a step or two further.  I saw this idea on this great blog named The Decorated Cookie.  You can see the original post here.

I started this project by cutting a heart out of sugar cookie dough.  Then I cut a smaller heart out of one side.  I placed a lollipop stick under the dough and filled the little heart with crushed hard candy.  While in the oven, the cookie bakes onto the stick and the hard candy fills the heart shaped hole.  Once the cookies were cool, it was time to decorate.

I iced these with white royal icing and immediately dipped each one into crystal sugar.  I couldn’t stop at just white.

Here they are pretty in pink!

I decorated these cookies in red as well.  These are really perfect for Valentine’s Day! These sparkly stained glass heart cookies were a great idea and I’m so glad that I found this idea!  I had to put my own spin on them though and this is what I came up with:

I iced these in white royal icing and let them dry overnight.  I then used one of my cookie stencils to apply the word “Love” and a few little hearts.  Here is the whole collection:

Share these with the people you love; Happy Valentine’s Day!