Cookie Cutter Ice Windows

Cookie Cutter Ice Windows

With a deep cookie tray and cookie cutters, you can make an ice window that looks great in daylight or with illumination at night.

Jen Hedberg's excellent book, Ice Luminary Magic, provided the inspiration for this method, but in reverse.  She shows how to use cookie cutters to make ice shapes.  By switching which ice is saved and which is discarded, I make cookie-cutter shaped holes in ice windows.  

The "trick" is to keep as much water as possible out of the interior of the cookie cutters while freezing the ice in the tray.  This is accomplished by starting with the tray, the cookie cutters, and the water as cold as possible.  Then you pour a very thin layer of water carefully around the cookie cutters.  Leave it to freeze.  Keep more water at near-freezing temperatures and pour additional layers, letting each one freeze around the cookie cutters.  

When the ice is thick enough (usually five to eight layers), set the cookie tray on bubble wrap in the bathtub and release the sheet of ice.  Sometimes it works to just twist the tray a bit, but it may be necessary to pour a little hot water over the bottom.  I set the tray aside to use later for carrying the ice sheet.  If you're lucky, there is little or no ice inside the shapes, but usually you have to melt out a thin layer.  For that, I use a focused spray of hot water aimed into the cookie cutter while the sheet is held upright.  The hot water also helps loosen the cookie cutter so that it can be slid out.  

I'll generally slide the sheet of ice gently back into the tray after removing the cookie cutters.  At that point, it's possible to put it back outdoors with a bit of fresh ice-cold water to re-freeze.  That produces a solid ice window that usually has the design in clear ice while the rest of the sheet is milky white.  

Sometimes the result of adding back water is to make a ghostly image.  The main point of producing a solid sheet of ice is to be able to assemble four sheets into a square to make a large luminary with a candle in the middle, while protecting the candle from the wind.  For display as just a sheet standing up on end, I usually leave the holes open.

To add depth to the ice window, I often add ice appliques made in silicone baking pans like this one.  They can be "welded" in place by wetting them in ice water and touching them to the surface of the ice sheet.  

"Cut glass" ice lantern

This ice luminary is a variation on one from Jen Hedberg's book Ice Luminary Magic, in which a flexible insert into a bucket is used to produce a patterned surface on an ice lantern.  

For this one, we use a silicone roasting mat called "Pyramid Pan" and a commercial hexagonal Arctic Ice Lantern mold.

To make this version, I trim the curved ends of two Pyramid Pan mats.

For a small luminary, one mat is enough, but for the Arctic Ice Lantern mold, it takes two of them, overlapped inside the mold.

Here, the two mats are nested inside the Arctic Ice Lantern mold, with an overlap of several rows.  

It helps to freeze them in place with an initial inch or so of water in the bottom of the mold.  This should not come up over the indentation at the bottom, since that will provide the opening when the luminary is unmolded.  Very cold water is added after the first inch freezes, and that is allowed to freeze about 2" thick.

Here, the frozen luminary has been removed from the mold (seen in the background), by setting it upside down in a bathtub until it loosens, and gently letting it unmold onto bubble wrap.  It's been turned over to expose the opening that was created by the indentation in the mold not freezing solid.  There is a layer of ice on the outside of the Pyramid Pan mats, and that needs to be removed by freeing up the overlapped edge (using some hot water) and pulling it off.

I poured some hot water along the edge of the overlap until I could begin peeling it away from the luminary.  Once it starts pulling free, the remainder falls away easily in large sheets.  

There are a few points where this can be tricky.  It's sometimes hard to be sure the walls are thick enough, and I've had to add back the cold water and continue freezing if they are too thin.

I make a smaller version of this luminary in an extra-large Clorox wipe container from which I cut off the ridge at the top.  

For this one, I trim a Pyramid Pan to fit the mold.  This avoids having to overlap two mats, and it can be made in a home freezer.

This small lantern doesn't tolerate having a flame inside, but it can be illuminated with LED lights.

Here is one of the small "cut glass" luminaries inverted over an LED light and illuminated on a snowy night, when it would have been hard to have candles burning.