Stained glass biscuits recipe | Cooking with my kids (2024)

Enjoy some festive family baking with these fun Christmas stained glass biscuits. They make the perfect addition to any Christmas tree.

Stained glass biscuits, are such a lovely festive bake. They look a bit special, but are surprisingly easy to bake, making them a great holiday activity for children.

The first time I made these I was a little surprised at how well they turned out. I thought it would be harder to get the timing right so you melt the sweeties without burning the biscuits. I think they worked a treat though, and they look great hanging on our Christmas tree!

The cookie themselves are made from an easy sugar cookie that works really well for any cut out biscuit. It’s the same recipe that we use for our Christmas sugar cookies, so if you like you can split the batch of dough and make some of those too.

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How can kids help make these stained glass biscuits?

As with any easy biscuit recipe, kids can get to measure and mix the ingredients together. If you want to though, you can make the dough in advance (it’ll be fine in the fridge for a day or two), and then just get your kids to make the biscuits themselves. This is a good idea if you’ve got younger children with a shorter atttention span.

There’s also a fun job for kids getting to roll the cookie dough out and cut out the biscuits. Even really little kids who love playing with playdough should enjoy this job.

If your kids like bashing things then these biscuits will be right up their street. My kids had a great time choosing the different coloured sweets and crushing them with the rolling pin. It’s not something we do every day in the kitchen so it was a lot of fun!

How long will the biscuits last?

The stained glass biscuits will last for a day or two hanging on the tree before they soften so if you want to eat them you’ll need to do that shortly after baking them.

They’ll last a wee bit longer than that on your tree if you’re not planning to eat them although we did find the sweets eventually drip out of the biscuits we left hanging up so don’t leave them for too long (no more than a week).

What cutter can I use?

You’ll need a mixture of small and large cutters to make these cookies. We had a a few different sizes of Christmas tree cookie cutter so the kids enjoyed using those. If you don’t have varying sizes of festive cutters, use a cutter for the outside of the cookie, and then just cut the inside glass window out with a knife.

If you enjoy baking these stained glass biscuits, you might also like these festive treats.

Gingerbread men
Gingerbread house
Mince pies
Christmas sugar cookies
Stained glass window biscuits

Useful equipment

You might need the following baking tools/gadgets to make these stained glass biscuits

Digital scales
Freestanding mixer
Mixing bowl
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Christmas cookie cutters
Baking tray
Wire rack

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Difficulty: Easy

Time: 30 minutes plus 10 minutes baking

Serves: 2 dozen + cookies

Ingredients

200g (7/8 cup) unsalted butter, softened
280g (1 ¼ cups) caster sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
400g (3 1/5 cups) plain/all-purpose flour
A pinch of salt
½ tsp cream of tartar
Colourful boiled sweets

how to make stained glass biscuits

Preheat the oven to 170C/160C Fan /325F and line several baking trays with baking paper.

Mix the butter, sugar and vanilla extract

Get your kids to help measure out the butter (200g), sugar (280g) and vanilla extract (1/4 tsp) and pop them in a large mixing bowl or freestanding mixer. Cream them together (that means beat them with the k paddle of your mixer, hand held whisk or wooden spoons), until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the egg

Crack the egg in a small bowl and add to your mixture. Mix everything together. If you need to, use a spatula to scrape unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl.

Add the dry ingredients

Measure the flour (400g), salt, cream of tartar (1/2 tsp) and add to the butter/sugar mixture. Mix everything together so it comes together into a ball of soft dough.

Make the stained glass cookies

Dust your work surface with a little flour and roll out your dough until it is about ½ a cm thick.

Use festive cutters to cut shapes out and place them on your baking trays. If you have two cutters of the same shape but in different sizes, these work well for making your window. If you don’t, just use a knife to cut a hole in the middle of your biscuit.

Crush the boiled sweets (while still in the wrapper) with the end of a rolling pin. Hannah enjoyed this a lot once she got the hang of it. If your kids are littler they might need some help as you need to give them a good whack!

Sprinkle some of the crushed sweets into the middle of your biscuits.

Bake the stained glass biscuits

Pop the cookies in the oven for around 10 minutes. They’re ready when the edges are starting to turn a little golden and the window sweets have melted. As soon as you remove them from the oven use a straw or something similar to poke a hole at the top of each biscuit if you want to hang them up.

Leave them to cool until the windows have hardened. Place them on a wire rack to cool completely. If you’re planning to hand them up, thread a ribbon or thread through the hole.

Enjoy!

Pin stained glass window biscuits for later

Similar recipes

If you liked these stained glass biscuits, check out our other Christmas crinkle cookies and our Christmas recipes for kids.

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