HI -

Has anyone made the "stained-glass cookies" where you cut out the middle & melt lifesavers or jolly ranchers in the middle?

I'm trying to make shapes with the metal cookie cutters - not a cookie.
I had a leaf shaped cutter & melted the candies & they looked great, except I could not separate them from the cutters without breaking them. I wanted to have the "leaves" on top of a cake.

Should I spray the cutters with a cake release? butter them?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

We used to make them on shaped, buttered foil, when I was a kid.

You can spray your cutters with cooking oil. I know of one lady who made royal icing outlines and poured hard candy into them. It worked well for her, but I've never tried it. Never had the nerve. Have you looked for leaf-shaped hard candy molds?

Here are some other threads about hard candy that might help you:
http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-598381.html
http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-601034.html

Here's what I did. So I had the leaf shaped cookie cutters on a foil lined cookie sheet. I poured in crushed Jolly Ranchers of different colors to look like the leaves were changing color. Had and oven brick on top to try to keep the pressure even & so they would not "leak" as much. Had them in an oven at 350F for @10 -15 minutes.

They looked great - just couldn't release them from the molds. I will try the cooking oil spray & if that doesn't work - I'll have to buy the silicone molds.

Thank you for the links & ideas, I'll hopefully try another round tomorrow.

Well they sound pretty! Please keep us posted; I'd love to know how it ends up working out for you.

So I tried spraying the cutters with cooking oil. Very messy - didn't really work. I think I will have to try the silicon molds & peal them off after they are done.


-L

Sorry it didn't work for you. Good luck with the molds. It sounds like such a great idea. I don't know what isn't working.

I have done that but used plain Crisco with a small pastry brush to coat the cutters. They came out nicely using that.