Super-easy but stunning cookies that make for great ornaments or just a delicious holiday treat!
INGREDIENTS
For the Cookies:
- 1 cup unsalted butter 226g, room temp
- 1 cup granulated sugar 200g
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups all-purpose flour 480g, sifted
- 1/2 cup cornstarch 65g, sifted
- 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt 3g
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 5mL
For the Window Pane:
- 1/3 cup Hard candies You can use any one you'd like. I enjoy Jolly Ranchers.
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat to 375 degrees F.
- Sift the flour, cornstarch and salt into a large bowl and whisk together.
- In a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar together.
- Add eggs one at a time then the vanilla while mixing on low.
- Scrape the bowl down and mix in the dry mixture.
- Separate dough into two disks. Wrap in plastic and chill for about an hour. I like to roll my dough out a bit between two sheets of plastic wrap at this point so there's less rolling later on.
- Roll chilled dough to a 1/4 inch thickness.
- Cut out a shape using a medium to large cookie cutter. Cut out the window shape on the inside using a smaller shape.
- Poke a small hole at the top of the cookie. This is for the ornament hook.
- Place cookies on a silpat lined baking sheet.
- Add hard candies to a ziplock bag. Choose a brand and flavor of hard candies that you enjoy.
- Crush up, then add to the inside of the cookies. Distribute evenly.
- Bake for 12 minutes at 375F then allow to cool on baking sheet.
- Add ornament hook if hanging.
NOTES
- Measure your flour correctly! Adding too much flour to the recipe is the most common mistake. The best, and easiest way to measure flour is by using a scale. If you don't have one then fluff your flour with a spoon, sprinkle it into your measuring cup, and use a knife to level it off.
- Try not to get any hard candy on the sugar cookie as it will look messy.
- I used a pin to pop any air bubbles when the cookies were RIGHT out of the oven; this gave the cookies a wonderful unblemished look.
- You really need a silicone baking mat for this. Baking paper MIGHT work in a pinch though.
- Make sure you wait for the cookies to cool before lifting them off the baking sheet, they need to set and firm up.
- Humidity will make the candy centers of these cookies sticky so watch out!
You could "level up" your cookies by making two of each kind, "stuff" them and stick them together.
Watch this next video to see it illustrated. Don't worry about her ingredient measurements. It's the same process John uses that you just saw.
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