The Ingredient You Need To Create Stained Glass On Gingerbread Houses

When it comes to sweet and spicy cookies, nothing beats gingerbread. The classic cookie features a glorious mix of ingredients, including brown sugar, molasses, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. It's delicious as is, with a festive frosting design, or in its most well-known form as the heart and soul of the gingerbread house. While making a Christmas gingerbread house is not the easiest of endeavors, it's a fun project to tackle to get into the holiday spirit. And once you get the structural integrity down, all that's left is the fun part. Decorating offers you plenty of creative freedom, and one of our favorite decorative techniques is using Jolly Rancher candies to construct some super sweet stained glass windows.

While gingerbread house kits get better and more impressive each year, they can be sort of limiting. There's really nothing quite like a from-scratch gingerbread house, and adding some colorful candy stained glass can take it to a whole new level. To do it, begin by baking your gingerbread. While it's in the oven, prepare the Jolly Ranchers by crushing them up in a plastic bag with a rolling pin. Pour the small shards into a bowl, mixing all the flavors together. Then, five minutes before the gingerbread is done baking, remove it from the oven and sprinkle the Jolly Rancher pieces into each of the window holes. Bake it for five more minutes, or until the candy is melted.

The Jolly Rancher stained glass trick isn't just limited to gingerbread houses. You can also use the trick to turn any cake into a stained glass masterpiece. This idea uses a similar technique. First, crush up the Jolly Ranchers separately, and then spread each individual color onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake them for five to 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, removing them once the candy has melted. Then crack the sheets of candy into uneven pieces, and use this as a fun decoration on the sides and top of your cake. You could also use this technique to make glass shingles to decorate the roof of your gingerbread house.

If you're not much of a cake decorator, give cookies a try. With your favorite cookie cutter — we suggest using a star or a snowflake — cut out as many sugar cookies as your recipe calls for. Then, with a smaller version of the same shape cookie cutter, cut out the center of the bigger cookie. Instead of baking the dough before the Jolly Ranchers are added, this technique bakes everything together. Crush the candies and then fill the center of the cookies, popping them in the oven for their required amount of time; sugar cookies don't typically need more than 15 minutes. Once they're done, allow them to cool so that the melted Jolly Ranchers set, and then enjoy your miniature version of this gorgeous, artful dessert.