Stained Glass Cookies

These cookies were so delicious, I made them twice this Christmas. The first time I added more flour than in my recipe below, which made the outer sugar cookie more dense. I definitely recommend resisting the temptation to add more flour to the soft dough to make it more sturdy for cutting cookies -- while this made it easier for Zoee to help cut out the first batch, the more buttery, tender cookie is definitely worth the extra patience with the soft dough. The tofu acts as a binder, but is light enough to keep the cookies crisp.

After having no trick-or-treaters, I saved all of the red and green jolly ranchers from our candy horde specifically for this recipe. However, I've been told that other hard candies -- life savers, for example -- work just as well. Usually I mix candies together (which looks like stained glass), but since I only had red and green, I decided to stick with just one color.

Stained Glass Cookies

Ingredients:

• 0.5 cup vegan butter (Earth Balance margarine, for example)
• 0.5 cup sugar
• 2 heaping tbsp soft/silken tofu
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1.25 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 0.25 tsp salt
• equivalent of 10 "jolly rancher" hard candies

1. Unwrap the candies and place them in a ziplock bag. Wrap the bag in a kitchen towel and use a hammer or meat tenderizer to crush the candy into small pieces. 
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 
3. In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, tofu, and vanilla together for at least 3 minutes. 
4. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt into the butter/sugar mixture and stir until a soft dough forms. 
5. Roll the dough out onto a floured surface, to the desired thickness of your cookie (I prefer a crunchier 0.25 inch).
6. Using different sized cookie cutters, carefully cut out cookies and move to a baking sheet. 
7. Fill the inner part of the cookie with a generous portion of the crushed candies. (When the candy melts and spreads, it can become thin)
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cookies cool and the candy harden before you remove from the baking sheet.