- Today, I'm gonna show you how
to make these easy, breezy, beautiful window pane cookies.
They are so easy and almost fool proof,
but all your friends will be impressed
unless you wear them as earrings
in which case they'll be like,
"Hey, Cindy.
Little tacky today.
Try something better."
Anyways, let's get started.
I'm adding four cups or 480 grams of all purpose flour
into my bowl with a sifter attached,
Half a cup of cornstarch.
This is that magic ingredient
that lets those sugar cookies hold their shape
so they don't spread out.
And, about a little bit less than a teaspoon of kosher salt.
K, sift it all together.
All right, give it a whisk
just to make everything incorporated nicely, and set aside.
Into a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment,
I'm adding in one full cup, or 226 grams,
of unsalted butter at room temperature.
Very room temperature.
Cream it up.
And let's add the sugar right now.
One cup.
Let it get nice and fluffy, and then it's time for the eggs.
All right, we can scrap the bowl down now.
Love this color.
It's just off white.
Now, while the mixer's running, add in those two eggs.
First one, let it incorporate.
Second one, next step.
Egg two.
You can see it's nice and incorporated.
Scrap the bowl down just a bit,
and now we can add in our flour and cornstarch.
Okay, so we're just gonna dump that in there.
Don't spill any or make a mess.
On very low, mix it up.
K, while this is coming together,
let's add in a tablespoon of vanilla.
You can add less vanilla.
You can use peppermint oil because it's Christmas.
Whatever you want.
I'm excited. Look at this.
This is what it should look like.
It's come together and you can see,
it's really like a nice, almost Play Doh-y consistency.
Perfect for rolling out.
In fact, you could roll this out right now,
pop it into the oven, directly,
but it's a little bit soft to pick up the shapes,
so what we want to do is put this in a plastic bag,
pop it into the fridge,
let it chill for like 20 minutes or so
so it's hard enough for us to manipulate
with our hands without distorting the shapes
because the shapes,
we want to be really really nice and perfect.
All right, dump this out onto some plastic wrap.
And then, just press it down.
And, we're gonna cover it up
and give it a little bit of a roll just to get it started.
Get those edges nice and wrapped
and this is gonna go into the fridge for 20 minutes.
You do it overnight, do it for a couple days,
it'll be fine and then, once you're ready,
let's cut those shapes out.
I brought my dough out of the fridge
and it needs to warm up just a little bit
so I can roll it out.
So, in the mean time, let's smash some candies.
I have some Jolly Ranchers.
You can use whatever you'd like,
but choose a nice hard candy that's a color you appreciate.
So, here, some cherry Jolly Ranchers.
They look like beautiful rubies,
and they'll look really nice when we carefully put them
in the center of our cookies.
This melts in the oven, so it'll be perfect.
Take a couple, pop them into a nice, thick plastic bag.
Seal it up and then, it's time to get some aggression out.
Okay, so we're just gonna literally smash,
careful of your counter.
Smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash.
My rolling pin.
Okay, I'm back.
Don't use your beautiful, wood rolling pins
if you're worried about marring them.
Here's my marble one.
Smash, smash, smash, smash, smash.
Doesn't have to be all uniform.
It's gonna melt in the oven,
but you want it to be so you can fill in gaps
and make it nice and perfect.
That's good. This bag is very compromised,
but it's holding in the contents okay.
Do the same for the blue.
Okay, back to this.
This is when we're gonna use our nice,
beautiful wooden rolling pin.
So, sprinkle out some flour. Both sides preferably.
And now, roll it out. Oh, this is really hard still.
It's like an ab workout.
This is a lot of work.
Usually, I'd let it rest for maybe 10 minutes
or more if it's super hard like this.
I think my fridge is set
to a colder temperature than normal,
but just roll it out,
and now, it's much nicer by the way so.
A little bit of elbow grease went a long way.
Now, we're ready to cut our shapes out
and I want to tell you that I'm gonna be baking this
on a Silpat. Why?
Because that candy can not stick,
so if you bake directly on a baking sheet,
it would probably be troublesome.
I wouldn't even try it.
Maybe wax paper would be okay, but this is the best.
Things lift off it like magic.
It doesn't have to be the branded Silpat version.
It can be any silicon baking mat.
Okay, this is the fun part.
You get to choose all of your various cookie cutters
that you never ever use and put them together
into combinations that you enjoy.
So, I have big star.
A little star is gonna go inside.
A circle with a snowflake inside.
Whatever you want.
You only need to have a small shape in the middle
and a bigger shape on the outside.
All right, let's cut some of these big shapes out.
Sure didn't add enough flour onto the bottom.
Let's cut out a small shape on the inside.
There we go. That's one down.
It looks really nice.
And here's the deal.
These guys are beautiful cookies too
so you can go ahead and bake those separately
and I love this, but my husband says it's not okay
for sanitary reasons but you can pock a whole in here,
use a little ribbon or a hook,
and have these as Christmas ornaments,
at least for a day. The kids will grab them off.
If you have pets, forget it,
but if you have a tree that's out of the way
and you want to put these on,
go ahead and pop a little hole in with a skewer
or a straw and it works beautifully.
All right, let's do a star with another star
out of the middle.
The dough can't be to cold or it will crack.
So just FYI, you want the dough
to be more room temperature at this point.
That's why this no spread sugar cookie dough is amazing,
because it doesn't turn
into a pile of goo at room temperature.
Last shape is a circle with a Christmas tree inside.
So, cut that out.
Pop it out.
Cut that Christmas tree shape out.
Perfect.
Here's the fun part.
Now, we're gonna fill those voids in with candy
just like in real life.
Carefully spoon into the center
and just make sure you don't get any candy
on the actually cookie, has to go inside.
These got filled up pretty neatly.
There's a couple stray things here and there
but I don't think it's a problem.
Into the oven for 12 minutes at 375 Fahrenheit,
and then, keep an eye on them.
These just came out of the oven
and I popped all the bubbles.
They have to cool down completely
before you try and lift them off.
Otherwise, it'll be a disaster,
so go ahead, let them cool completely to room temperature.
It'll happen pretty quickly, and then, you'll see the magic.
Okay, I waited like two minutes.
Comes off beautifully, look at that.
You can see the light through it.
It's like a magical Christmas moment
and if you want to be that person,
go ahead and now you have a beautiful ornament
for your tree which will be eaten or you know,
destroyed quickly, but look how cute it is right now.
Okay, it smells really good too.
So, I'm not gonna take a bit of these
because I actually will be putting these on my tree,
but if you were wondering, these do taste really good.
That cornstarch just adds
in a kind of melt in your mouth situation happening,
and look at those nice edges.
They're not bloated.
They really kept their shape.
I hope you guys try this recipe.
Thank you so much for watching.
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