Fall Recipes: Festive Decorated Stained Glass Leaf Cookies

These fall stained glass cookies were really just an experiment. I had autumn leaf and flower cookie cutters and some beautiful glittery orange icing, so I wanted to see what would happen.

I thought I was buying red-colored, cherry-flavored hard candy to make the stained glass windows. I was only half-right. They're cherry-flavored (and really tasty), but they were a bland yellow color. I had already opened the cookie dough package when I realized that, so I thought I'd give it a go anyway.

These cookies actually came out with a slight East Indian look, due to the colors and dots I used to decorate them. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just think most people would prefer a more colorful look. But the bottom line is that you can use whatever colors you want.

I went the more natural/organic route with my cookies, but if you don't care about that, Jolly Rancher has some great hard candy in different flavors and colors. I must have eaten twice my weight in Jolly Ranchers during my childhood, so I'm a big fan of their sweet and sour goodness.

Here's how I made the stained glass cookies:

I took the easy way out and used packaged cookie dough. I also used organic hard candies, a nice Wilton Leaf cutter and a cheap flower cookie cutter I got in a set at the dollar store.

Additionally, I used orange glitter piping gel from Charm City Cakes (featured on The Food Network's The Ace of Cakes).

You can get the general idea from these components and then adjust them according to your taste.

. . .

Instructions

1. After waiting for the dough to warm up a bit, roll it out and cut it with the cookie cutters.

2. Cut out some holes with a sharp knife. (I hope your knife is sharper than mine! Some of the edges are a little jagged because my knife chattered, but it wasn't visible in the final cookies.)

3. After putting the hard candies in a plastic bag and whacking the heck out of them with a hammer, I filled the holes I cut in the cookies with the broken pieces.

In retrospect, I've decided that a food processor would have been a better choice for this task. Oh well.

4. I added some non-pariels to the flower, which are the spotted-looking things in the center. Again, in retrospect, maybe not.

5. I used the orange icing to add dots and outlines to the cookies. I think these would benefit from having a coating of royal icing first, and maybe also having some other icing colors. But all in all, I think they came out pretty cute. Oh, and they tasted good too.

Happy fall, y'all, from Georgia, and happy baking!