These beautiful stained glass gingerbread house cookies are so beautiful and good enough to eat!
The perfect way to celebrate the holidays is with a stained glass gingerbread house cookie. They are easier than regular gingerbread houses because you don’t have to assemble a whole house and they are so dang cute.
Simply decorate the cookie and you got yourself a beautiful gingerbread house cookie.
These cookies are perfect to make for your next holiday cookie exchange too. Try out these other cookie recipes that go perfectly with these bad boys.
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Easy Classic Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
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I am going to show you exactly how to make these cute houses and give you a step-by-step guide to master them on your own.
Ingredients:
- butter
- granulated sugar
- unsulphured molasses
- all purpose flour
- baking soda
- salt
- ginger
- cinnamon
- nutmeg
- powdered sugar
- water
- powdered egg whites
- gel food coloring (if desired)
- Jolly Rancher hard candy
- sprinkles of choice
How to create stained glass:
The stained glass windows are my absolute favorite part of these cookies. They literally glow if you put light behind them. What a special sight! The kids just think it’s magical and so do I.
Stained glass windows are easier to create than you might think. Normally sugar like this would require a candy thermometer and some skill, but using the Jolly Rancher hard candy requires only a rolling pin and a plastic baggie.
First you will need to place your Jolly Ranchers into a baggie, remove the air and crush them with a rolling pin. Make sure to crush into a fine powder like consistency. If you want to go for a true stained glass look, crush different colors in separate bags.
Next cut out a space for your window in your cookies with a small cookie cutter. I like to use a fun shape like a star, but you can also cut out squares or rectangles as well.
Then bake the cookies.
When you have 3 minutes left you will add the Jolly rancher shards into the cut out and continue cooking. You can add multiple colors of the shards or a single color.
Finally, let the cookies cool to harden the sugar.
Stained glass gingerbread recipe:
Gingerbread House Cookies
Make these into gingerbread cookies or you can use this exact recipe for gingerbread houses or gingerbread men.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup unsulphured molasses
- 4 1/2 cup all purpose flour + 1/2 cup
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Royal Icing Ingredients:
- 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon powdered egg whites
- 2-4 tablespoons water (depending on your desired thickness)
- gel food coloring (if desired)
Decorating Ingredients:
- Jolly Rancher hard candy
- Sprinkles of choice
Instructions
- Melt the butter on low heat in a small saucepan.
- Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
- Add the molasses and stir to combine.
- Remove from the heat and set aside to cool until lukewarm.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour in the lukewarm butter mixture and beat to blend everything together.
- Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup flour and form a ball.
- Remove the dough from the bowl and form into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
- After refrigerating, roll the dough into a 1/8 inch disk.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F.
- Use a stencil or a ruler to cut even rectangles (about 5 inches x 3 inches) or make any size you like.
- Cut the top of the rectangle to create a roof and use the triangle scrap piece to cut the chimney. Add the chimney to your roof.
- Use a small star or square cookie cutter and punch out dough in the middle of the cookie. This will create your window for the stained glass look.
- Use a bench scraper to lift the cookies and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Continue with the rest of the houses. Make the edges perfectly straight by pressing the bench scraper or knife against the sides of the house.
- Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. (Make sure you check instruction 18).
- Meanwhile prep the stained glass ingredients.
- To make the stained glass windows crush the jolly ranchers in a small baggie with a rolling pin. You can use one or multiple colors of jolly ranchers, but just crush each color in individual bags.
- When you have 3 minutes left of baking add the candy pieces (a single color or multiple colors) into the window holes and put back in the oven to finish cooking.
- Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool.
- Make the royal icing by blending all ingredients together in a stand mixer or hand beaters until soft peaks form.
- Color icing if desired. Place the icing in pastry bags.
- Cut a very small tip off the bottom of the pastry bag. Begin piping in single strokes to your desired design.
- Decorate according to video instructions or to your own desired design.
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