Stained Glass Cookies

Those are pretty. I probably wouldn’t eat them, but I might take them to Christmas at the in-laws’.

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Looking at the pictures, I thought that you had cooked up hard candy yourself with corn syrup and sugar. Using crushed life-savers is a genius time saver. Good call.

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I wonder if you could alter the cookie dough so that it bakes up rather hard (I’m sure this could be done with a little experimentation). Then you could put a hole in one of the star arms and hang them on the Christmas tree as ornaments.

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Oh, and another thing: using crushed life-savers (or jolly ranchers) works well for making stained glass windows for gingerbread houses! Just melt a bunch on waxed paper, then press toothpicks in to make squares/rectangles. When candy cools, there are thinner spots where the toothpicks are, so you can break the candy into the shapes you’ve laid out, then attach the windows with frosting.

It is rather tedious, but makes for some nifty gingerbread houses.

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I was going to suggest using them as tree decorations too.

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Indeed, these are actually often made as christmas ornaments! the recipe suggests using a pin to cut a whole through the cookie portion and then stringing them up.

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Cool, you could make a gingerbread church. I’ve always wanted to try making a gingerbread house, but I don’t have the patience.

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These look delicious! I will try these during my holiday baking.

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Mike D has a great story about Gingerbread houses….Don’t you MikeD?

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You know, if they’re really hard you could also use them as weapons.

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Weapons at Christmas?

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Clearly you’ve bought into that whole “Silent Night,” peace and harmony thing. Sometimes you need to defend yourself.

Besides, I’ve heard there’s a fat guy breaking into people’s houses and stealing their milk and cookies. Never cleans up after his “transportation” either. How’d you like to scrape that off your roof?

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Now, take it easy. That fat guy wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’s a saint. He works on a barter system, in which he exchanges prettily wrapped packages for the “stolen” milk and cookies. His transportation and any necessary clean-up are covered under an oral contract that has been in place for centuries. This contract, commonly referred to as “The Night Before Christmas”, is renewed yearly as it is read aloud to children of all ages, all over the world. Ask your grandparents about it.

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Three of my grandparents are dead. Thanks for the reminder.

And I don’t read that to my children. Neither is any oral contract implied by the reading of said story. If that were the case I would think the Attorney General would require a disclaimer published with every new copy of the poem.

Personally I don’t open packages whose origins are sketchy, no matter how pretty the paper is.

Actually the modern form of the fat guy in question has no relation to the saint other than the derivation of his pseudonym. We can thank Thomas Nast for that with his cutesy little drawing.

And the modern concept is generally only celebrated in the US and possibly Canada. It never was world-wide. In Europe the saint’s feast day and the eve thereof are celebrated separately from Christmas (except by Americans living overseas) and are related only by occuring in the same month.

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Sorry, meant to say “grandparent”.

I knew that would bring out the history buff in you. You forgot to mention his German origins. There is actually a version of the “fat guy” in many countries around the world. He has several aliases.

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All originating from Saint Nicholas. Nicholas having several variations including Niklaus which is where we get the “Claus.” St. Nicholas’ feast day is December 6. On St. Nicholas’ Eve children put their shoes out in the hopes that they will be filled with treats in the morning. Hence the stockings. Don’t remember the exact story of Saint Nick. I think it had something to do with him giving to the poor.

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