The Christmassy feel to my cooking is certainly continuing, and I’m trying out lots of ideas that I may use over December either when I have people to visit or as edible gifts for my family and friends.
I remember seeing a version of stained glass biscuits when I was little and thinking there was something pretty magical about the way the centre really did look like glass. I don’t know why I have never tried them before now, but my present festive mood meant this was the perfect thing to bake! If you haven’t seen these before it’s just a biscuit with a hole in the centre which is filled with bits of crushed up boiled sweets – they melt in the cooking to fill the gap with a clear coloured sugar which looks a bit like stained glass. They are perfect as little decorations or as edible gifts!
I used a Lorraine Pascale recipe that I found on the BBC food site, from the programme Lorraine’s ย Last Minute Christmas, and varied it only by using dark muscovado sugar instead of light brown sugar and by missing out the ground cloves (I didn’t have any in the kitchen!).
Apart from one shattered centre (impatient me trying to take them off the tray too soon!), I think these were pretty successful, and they certainly looked like I hoped they would. However, the recipe did warn that the dough can be quite dry and crumbly and I found this to be a bit of an understatement! It was quite a pain to work with, even when warm which slightly detracted from the fun of the baking session. I did love the spicy flavour of the ginger and cinnamon though.
I will definitely be making more stained glass biscuits this year, but I may experiment with using a different biscuit mix so that they are a bit friendlier to make!
These are gorgeous! May have to try this out. Presumably you just had a large and a small cookie cutter? I can do stars, but suddenly annoyed I don’t have large and small Christmas trees which would also look good.
Yep I used the smallest and largest star cutters out of a set. I’ve seen these with heart shapes, circles, and snowflakes but I agree Christmas trees would look great with red or green centres!
I’ve never seen these before. So beautiful!!
They are pretty aren’t they! The colours look great with the light through them!
These look absolutely awesome, such a genius idea! Love it!
Thanks! I think they are really fun!
These are incredible!!
I hope you don’t mind if I reblog your link on my reblog page?
Thanks! Very happy for you to reblog ๐
I love your stained glass biscuits! How great would these be to hand from a small tree in the kitchen as edible ornaments. Only problem…. they’d be eaten to soon! ๐
Thanks – glad you like them! I’m definitely making more when we put our decorations up next week!
wow – they are amazing. My daughters would LOVE these.
They are a good fun bake and there is something pretty magical about the way they end up! Definitely something your daughters could help you make! Thanks for commenting!
I love these! Beautiful.
Thanks ๐ I was really pleased with how pretty they looked with the light through them. They’ve put me in a really Christmassy mood!
Beautiful! I love the idea of using the dark brown sugar instead of light. Looks delicious.
Thanks! I often switch from light to dark sugar in recipes as I prefer the more treacle-like flavours. It looked great in these biscuits as a real contrast to the coloured centres.
These are gorgeous, I will be making these for the holiday!
Thanks – Merry Christmas and happy baking!
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These look great! I’ve wanted to try this for a while but I find it quite intimidating! I will though, you mark my words ๐
Thanks for stopping by and commenting! Definitely worth giving these a go – they look harder than they are! Good luck with making them – looking forward to seeing them if you post a picture!
So beautiful! Thanks for the visit to my blog.
Thanks for stopping by and for the lovely comment – really liked your blog and will keep an eye on posts to come!