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Shamrock Stained Glass Cookies

At our house St. Patrick’s Day is sort of a big deal, we have lots of Irish heritage on both sides of the family, and it gives us an excuse to make some dishes we might not otherwise make.  Shamrock Stained Glass Cookies are one of those recipe!

For us it’s not about Green Beer, but we do like to make an event out of it, including desserts that are kid friendly, so NO beer.  These Shamrock Stained Glass Cookies are pretty to look at, and fun to make, both good qualities in a recipe.  Oh, and they taste good too.

Flavoring Sugar Cookies:

The recipe calls for a combination of almond and vanilla, but honestly you can play with these.  Since the jolly rancher centers are a lime flavor you will want to keep that in mind when choosing other options.  Here are a few that will definitely taste great.

• Lime extract and lime zest
• Lemon extract and lemon zest
• Coconut extract

You likely will have most of the supplies you need, except for the cookie cutters. I recommend this set from Amazon as it includes the required 2 sizes of Shamrocks, plus a few other images that also would have multiple uses. The Rainbow can easily be used for a kids party, the Pot of Gold could be re-used at Halloween for Cauldron Cookies, and the Sweater (which I already have), is the BEST for making Ugly Sweater Cookies at Christmas. The sweater also works for Fathers Day!

Full Disclosure, this site participates in the Amazon LLC Affiliate Program and we will earn a small commission for any purchase you make by clicking on a link.   Rest assured, this does not affect your cost in any way.

A few tips and tricks:

• Make the dough ahead of time if you are making these with kids.  I find they prefer the decorating part best.
• While the picture  shows Green Stained Glass, it can be fun to make a Rainbow of colours too. It’s all up to you!
• The dough in the recipe has almond flavouring, feel free to change that up if you like.  Vanilla, Lemon, Lime all work great

Shamrock Stained Glass Cookies

Print

Almond flavored rolled sugar cookies filled with Jolly Ranchers candies to make the stained glass are an adorable treat to make this St. Patrick's Day. Have the kids join in for the decorating for a fun family afternoon craft.

Ingredients

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon almond extract
• Powdered sugar or flour, for rolling
• Jolly Rancher hard candies, approximately one candy per cookie
• green decorating sugar
• green icing; store bought in a tube

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment
   paper.
2. Whisk together dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a mixing bowl, blend the butter and sugar until creamy and light. Add egg, almond extract, and vanilla extract. Mix well. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Dough may be a little crumbly.
4. Turn out the dough onto a surfaced sprinkled with powdered sugar or flour. Press into a ball and then roll out to ¼ inch thickness.
5. Use cookie cutters to create shapes. Carefully lift shaped cookies to the baking sheet. Using a flat spatula is recommended to help the cookies maintain their shape.
6. Separate Jolly Rancher hard candies
   by color and place inside a quart-sized freezer bag. Place all bags
   into a larger gallon-sized freezer bag. Sandwich the gallon-sized
   freezer bag between two towels and beat candies with the flat side of
   a meat mallet until crushed. Candy will pierce BOTH bags so be
   prepared.
7. Scoop candy pieces into the cut opening of each cookie. The crushed candy should fill most of the hole and mound a little on top. Depending on the size of your opening, you will use the equivalent of approximately 1 candy for each cookie.
8. Sprinkle now with decorating sugar if using.
9. Bake cookies for 7 to 9 minutes. Do not brown the cookies. Allow cookies to cool for at least 20 minutes on the baking sheet before carefully removing to a cooling rack.
10. Once completely cooled pipe on green icing if using. Let icing harden before storing.
11. Store in an airtight container between layers of parchment paper to keep the candy from attaching to the candy in other cookies.

Notes

IMPORTANT: Do not crush the Jolly Rancher candies prior to using as
they will adhere to one another and become a hardened mass of
candy. Also, if the dough is rolled too thin, keeping the cookies
together while moving them to a baking sheet will be very difficult.
Using a flat cookie spatula will help but make sure the cookie dough
is at least ¼ inch. Thicker cookies will require more crushed candy.
A basting brush can help keep the tiny piece of candy inside the
cookie opening.

Still not sure how to cook the best Corned Beef & Cabbage? 

I have the solution!  Using the Instant Pot means you can cook your entire meal from prep to plating in 2 hours. Normally that Corned Beef would need 8 hours in the Slow Cooker, or 4 or more in the oven.  This is a game changer.  You can also cook the whole thing the day before, and just reheat it on St. Patty’s Day if that works better.