Windowpane Cookies

Again, with the apologies. I'm sorry! I've been traveling and applying to graduate school, and thus not blogging. I also didn't have my camera on my travels, so the crafty things I did went unrecorded. Today, I offer up the last of my December cookie project. In coming days, I'll show you a bit of New Orleans, since the Henz will be in town.

But on to the cookies. These are a combination of recipes and concepts. I started with this recipe, but found that I was defeated by the sticky impossible dough. So I tried this one, but kept the candy concept. The dough itself is a dream. Not too sticky, and it results in a nice tender cookie.


Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened at room temperature for an hour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 ounces cream cheese (1/4 of a standard cream cheese package)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Jolly Ranchers, unwrapped and crushed

Directions:

Cream together the butter and sugar, then add in the egg and mix until everything is pretty smooth. Add in the cream cheese and vanilla, mixing thoroughly. Then mix in the next three ingredients. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour, until ready to use.

Preheat the oven to 350, and roll out the dough to 1/8" to 1/4" thickness and cut out cookies. To make the windowpane cookies, use two cutters of the same shape but different sizes. Cut out with the larger one first, then cut out the center of the resulting cookie with the smaller one. Place resulting cookie on lined cookie sheet, then carefully fill the center with the crushed jolly rancher. You don't want the rancher dust to get on the cookie, since it will stain.

Bake cookies for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on thickness, and let cool completely on the cookie sheet. The jolly rancher may look bubbly and weird out of the oven, but don't worry, as it cools it will solidify and smooth out.