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Savannah Guthrie's Favorite Holiday Cookies Have a Surprising Center Ingredient
The TODAY anchor calls this recipe "one of my distinct Christmas cookies."
If you want to wow your friends and family at your next holiday cookie swap, Savannah Guthrie has a delicious recipe for you.
The TODAY anchor has shared her recipe for “Savannah’s Stained Glass Cookies” that’s not only easy to make — but it’s beautiful. Read on to find out her surprising and sugary ingredient that makes this baked good look like a historic church window.
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Savannah Guthrie adds a ring-shaped hard candy in the center of her Christmas sugar cookies
During a holiday segment on TODAY on December 18, 2024 with Hoda Kotb, Craig Melvin, Al Roker, and Carson Daly, Guthrie revealed the simple ingredient she uses to make her Christmas sugar cookies look like stained glass — a Life Saver!
“This is one of my distinct Christmas cookies,” Guthrie said, adding that she cuts out a hole in the middle of the sugar cookie and puts a Life Saver hard candy in the center before baking them. “We call them stained glass.”
Guthrie has fond memories of making “Stained Glass Sugar Cookies” ever since her mom read about this clever hack in a magazine. “I just remember doing it,” she told her TODAY co-hosts.
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You can use all sorts of hard candies to make Stained Glass Cookies
While Guthrie’s recipe calls for a sugar cookie base and fruity Life Savers, you can get creative with it and use whatever hard candy you prefer.
Some recipes use full-size Jolly Ranchers in the center, and others crush up a bunch of hard candies to get a rainbow or tie-dye effect. Some recipes require no baking at all and use colorful mini marshmallows for another variation called “Church Window Cookies.” You can even switch up the base and use shortbread for the cookie.
Savannah Guthrie’s Christmas traditions also include matching pajamas
Every year since 2016, the year her son Charley was born, Guthrie and her family have worn matching Christmas pajamas for the holiday. “He was only 2 weeks old,” Guthrie revealed on TODAY in 2022. “Every year we’ve kept up that tradition, and I love seeing how the kids have grown. We haven’t grown, but they have.”
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Indeed, Guthrie, her husband (Michael Feldman) and their two children — daughter Vale, 10, and son Charley, 8 — have worn the most adorable matching pajama sets on Christmas morning. And it’s a tradition the TODAY anchor has totally embraced. As she wrote on X on Christmas Day in 2017, “That’s it. We are a matching Christmas PJs family.”
Watch TODAY weekdays at 7 a.m. ET on NBC.
