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These stained glass sugar cookies are the easiest gluten free Christmas cookies with maximum impact. They're stable enough that you can even poke a small hole before baking and hang them from the Christmas tree!
Why this recipe works
Just like the stained glass sugar cookies you remember, these are simple rolled, shaped sugar cookies with a cut-out center that's filled with crushed colorful hard candies. When you bake the cookies with the chopped candies in the center hole, the candies melt into a single see-through sheet of candy reminiscent of a stained glass window.
The cookies themselves, a slight variation of our cutout gluten free sugar cookies recipe, are simple and easy to make, since the raw dough is made in one single bowl and isn't not chilled before baking. It's so easy to handle, and it will hold any shape you can dream of.
Luckily, the most popular candies used for these popular holiday cookie-exchange favorites, Jolly Ranchers and hard Lifesavers, are naturally gluten free. Making the best cookie plate Christmas cookies has never been easier!
While we are making cookies, add in some of my gluten free chocolate chip cookies, gluten free thumbprint cookies or gluten free snickerdoodles as well.
Expert tips
Choose the right candies
Almost any hard candy that you crush and place in the center of these cookies will melt in the oven in then firm right back up once cool. I like to use Jolly Rancher hard candies best here because the colors are the most vibrant—both before baking and after. Lifesavers hard candies also work. The original flavors work best, since the colors are simple and bright. Softer candies, like butterscotch, tend to taste stale after baking, so I'd avoid those.
Crush them into chunks
To crush candy into chunks, seal a few unwrapped candies of one color in a zip-top plastic bag, lay it flat on a hard surface, and hit it a few times quickly with a meat tenderizer or mallet (not a rolling pin, which is too soft). Avoid crushing the candy finely, since candy dust is too hard to keep confined to the center hole. Plus, very small pieces of candy will melt more quickly and may burn before the cookies have baked completely.
Keep colors separate
When you're crushing them, avoid combining different colored candies or you'll end up with dull, mostly brown, centers. When you fill the centers of the raw cookies, keep in mind that any candies that aren't directly in the center holes will stain the cookies themselves.
Ingredient substitutions
Dairy free
You can replace the butter in the cookie recipe with Melt brand vegan butter. The edges won't be quite as clean, but the recipe still turns out.
Egg free
There is only one egg in the cookie recipe, so you should be able to replace it with a “chia egg” (1 tablespoon ground white chia seeds + 1 tablespoon lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel). You may see some flecks of chia in the cookies, though.
Gluten Free Christmas Cookies Recipe
Equipment
- Pairs of cookie cutters in graduated shapes (suggested shapes: large and small stars, large and small Christmas trees, large and small hearts)
Ingredients
For the cookies
- 2 cups (280 g) all-purpose gluten free flour blend, plus more for sprinkling if necessary (See Recipe Notes for flour selection tips)
- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum, (omit if your blend already contains it)
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 3 tablespoons (22 g) confectioners’ sugar
- 8 tablespoons (112 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 (50 g (weighed out of shell)) egg, at room temperature, beaten
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
For the stained glass centers
- 16 Jolly Rancher or Life Savers hard candies, crushed into chunks
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line rimmed baking sheets with unbleached parchment paper and set them aside.
- If you haven’t already, unwrap and crush the hard candies by placing a few of each color in a sealed plastic bag and tapping with a meat tenderizer or mallet. Don’t crush the candies too far in advance or the chunks will begin to stick to one another. Set the candies aside.
- In a large bowl, place the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar, and confectioners’ sugar and whisk to combine well.
- Add the butter, egg, and vanilla, and mix to combine. The dough will be thick and relatively stiff, and you may need to squeeze it together with your hands to bring all of it together.
- Roll the dough between two sheets of unbleached parchment paper or on a very lightly floured surface into a round a bit less than 1/3-inch thick.
- Using the larger of a pair of cookie cutters, cut out shapes from the dough and place them about 1-inch apart on a prepared baking sheet.
- Place the smaller, matching cookie cutter in the center of each shape and cut out a matching hole, removing the center.
- Fill the center of each hole with chunks of one color of the candy. Gather and reroll scraps and repeat the process with another pair of matching shapes.
- To make the cookies into a holiday decoration, poke a small hole (the smaller end of a chopstick works great) into the dough near the top of each cookie.
- Place the baking sheet in the center of the preheated oven and bake until the cookies are set and the candies have melted completely, about 10 minutes, depending upon size.
- The melted candy will be bubbling, but will settle as the cookies cool. Allow the cookies to cool completely on the baking sheet.
- Peel the paper away from the back of the cookies to remove them from the baking sheets.
Video
Notes
My favorite gluten free flour blends are Better Batter's original blend gluten free flour and Nicole's Best multipurpose blend (with added xanthan gum). Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour also works, but add an additional 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum to the dry ingredients or the cookies will be crumbly. To make your own blend using one of my “mock” recipes, please see the all purpose gluten free flour blends page.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
FAQs
The flat top of a small hammer works well, too. Just use controlled movements, crushing rather than hammering, so you don't grind the candy into dust.
Nothing! It doesn't suffer at all. Just don't apply heat at all in defrosting them, or the candy will melt again and just drop out of the center.
If you don't have Jolly Ranchers or Life Savers hard candies, you can also use chopped candy canes, starlight mints, butterscotch disks, cinnamon hearts (don't chop them), root beer barrels or even Dum-Dums (carefully remove all traces of the stick). Avoid anything chewy or with a soft center, which won't melt properly and will prevent the center from drying fully.
Yes, of course! Without the cutout centers and candies, they're really the same as our cut-out gluten free sugar cookies that you can make into any shape at all.
Hi! Love your recipes! What corn meal do you use. It seems like Bobs Red Mill doesn’t produce G-F cornmeal anymore…
Bob’a Red Mill still makes gf cornmeal that I find widely available in stores and online. I know there are other brands, like Artowhead Mills, but you’d have to google their products to determine if you’re comfortable with them.