‘Cookies are made of butter and love’.
Norwegian Proverb
A cut-out cookie made out of my favourite basic sugar cookie dough. Then smaller bits are cut-out and filled with broken pieces of hard-boiled candy, and put in to bake. In a while you can see the candy melting beautifully into the cut-outs & the cookie baking to a perfect brown. I make these a couple of times in the winter months; in summer they tend to get sticky due to humidity levels being high. They involve an extra bit of effort, otherwise would love to make them more often!
Ingredients:
Butter – ¾ cup (room temp)
Castor Sugar- 1 cup (I grind sugar crystals in my coffee grinder)
Egg – 1 / beaten
Flour – 2 ½ cups
Salt – 1 pinch
Vanilla Essence/Extract – 1 tsp
Method:
- Beat the butter and sugar till fluffy and light.
- Add the salt + vanilla essence and beat for 30 seconds.
- With a spatula mix in the beaten egg.
- Put in all the flour in one go, and gather together to make a firm dough.
- Chill for at least 30 minutes in wrap.
- Preheat the oven to 190deg C. Keep 4 cookie sheets ready with baking parchment (I use aluminium foil).
- Roll out to ¼ inch thickness and cut with assorted cookie cutters. Place them on the prepared cookie sheet.
- Cut out smaller shapes into the cookies.
- Fill these smaller cut-outs with small amounts of crushed hard-boiled candy. I’ve used ‘poppins’ which we get in a roll in different colours. If you wish to hang them, make small holes on top of each cookie with a straw.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. You will see the candy melting and bubbling.
- Remove from oven; spread the candy around with a wodden pick if the cavity is not filled completely. Let the cookies lay on the sheet for a minute. Carefully remove to racks & cool. I usually cut around the foil on each cookie, & peel it off once the cookie is cool. These cookies are quite fragile when hot/warm.
- This recipe makes approximately 4 dozen 3″ cookies.
‘People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within’.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
