Stain Glass Window Cookies And A Final Goodbye

As Christmas approaches, formal approaches and basically, everything points towards the end of another school year. While this is truly fantastic as by going into Year 11, I am finally given the opportunity to study what I want, rather than pointless topography maps in geography, this is also rather sad – my food tech classes finally come to an end, the monotony of study without a decent break in the middle of the week begins and my food blogging must be controlled (but definitely done :))

I feel a sense of loss at this change – it was expected so I don’t understand why it seems to hit so hard that it is over – I can only suppose it is because I shall never be taught by Ms D again, never bake or cook with friends in that atmosphere and never feel the pride in having a connoisseur smile and say the food you made tastes good – I will miss it all.

As a parting gift, a tradition of Ms D, she baked us these wonderful gingerbread people. She customised them with our name and made it a boy or a girl, accordingly.

Now these are big cookies, and customised in three different icings – the effort she put in goes to show how much she cared for our class and I can safely say, our class reciprocated 🙂

I ate mine as soon as I got home (after photographing of course! – though I was tempted…) and it was the sweetest and most delicious gingerbread person I had ever eaten. In my life now, I will always associate her with these biscuits and I think that is beautiful.

Well, look at me getting all sappy and not even moving onto honouring my last food tech lesson with a shebang post about it!

These stain-glass window cookies were amazing – simple as that – no lies, no exaggerations I promise. The shortbread, while made with a recipe which seemed very strange at first, was soft and moist with a delicious traditional flavour.
The boiled lollies were sugarless! but tasted brilliant all the same (I should know, I probably ate half of the crushed bits while waiting for the cookies :P)

I definitely must emphasise though the importance I place on refrigerating this dough – you see, we did not have a spare half hour lying around and we must have used an extra half cup of flour just to make the dough not stick to the rolling pin and easy to cut!!!
Also, on the baking time, we added approximately 2 minutes onto both the initial 5 minutes and the latter in order to get a nicer golden brown!

A last tip (since I don’t think any adaptations are necessary) – use a variety of essences or zests (which we actually discluded) in the cookies and when breaking the boiled sweets, cutting them into small pieces makes it easier as crushing often makes a powdery substance hard to handle and which is colourless!

So, I give you the final baking from my school to yours (unlike Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home to Yours) – Enjoy mes amis!

Stain Glass Christmas Cookies
Source: School Recipes

Makes: 36

Ingredients

• 250g butter, softened
• 2 tsp finely grated lemon (or any fruit) zest
• 1/2 tsp almond essence (we used vanilla but your choice)
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tbs water
• 2 1/4 cup plain flour + extra for kneading and rolling
• 90g assorted colours boiled lollies (sugarfree is wanted)

Method

1. In a large bowl. beat together butter, sugar, essence, zest, water and egg until mixture is smooth and well combined (I know this method of everything at once is a little strange but it works fine) – do not overbeat (curdled appearance)
2. Stir in flour until well combined
3. Knead dough on a floured bench until smooth
4. Cover dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes
5. While refrigerating, cut up the lollies as small as possible and keep them in groups of their colours
6. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line 2 baking trays
7. Roll dough out on a pastry board to approximately 4mm thick (we made ours a little thicker)
8. Cut shapes from dough using large sized cookie cutters and then use small cutters to cut a shape out from the centre of the large cookies
9. Place large holed cookies and small cookies onto baking trays
10. Bake for 5 ( to 7) minutes
11. Remove from oven and sprinkle in the boiled lollies cut up into the various holes
12. Return to oven for 5 (to 7) minutes or until golden brown

Notes

• If desired, poke a hole into the top of each cookie before baking so that when it is cooled, you can tie a ribbon inside and use as decoration
• Recommended 1 colour per biscuit hole but as you can see, 2-3 colours can have a cool marble effect 🙂