Italian Rainbow Cookies

Have you had Rainbow Cookies before? They have a bunch of names: Italian flag cookies, Napoleon cookies, tri-color cookies, seven-layer cookies, seven-layer cake, Venetian cookies, or, if you're my husband, "colorful cookies" since we can't call them RAINBOW since there aren't enough colors. I'm a huge fan of desserts that look complex and fancy but are actually very difficult to screw up and are much easier than anyone things. It's a great ego boost to your baking skills; "yes, I know, they're a work of art! Ugh, it was really a labor of love, I'm so glad you enjoy them, I spent hoooouuuurs on them!" and no one has to know that the "hours" you spent were a bunch of hours doing other stuff, since there's a good amount of waiting between steps. Rake in the compliments and Instagram likes while enjoying your tasty treat that really wasn't too much effort at all.

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 8 oz almond paste

• 1 cup white sugar

• 3 sticks (1.5 cups) salted butter (softened)

• 2 cups flour

• 4 eggs (separated)

• 1/4 cup milk*

• nonstick cooking spray

• 1.5 cups semisweet chocolate (melted)

• 2 teaspoons canola oil

• 1 cup jam (raspberry and strawberry are the classics here)**

• 2 teaspoons almond extract***

• red & green food coloring (or colors of your preference)

• sprinkles (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 325°F.

2. Set out butter to soften to room temperature.

3. Chop your almond paste block into a few pieces instead of one brick, then add to one stick of butter in a mixer with a paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until totally combined - check for chunks of the almond paste and squash it down if necessary.

4. Once it's fully combined, add the other two sticks of butter and beat until combined and a little fluffy.

5. Add egg yolks, milk, and almond extract; mix until combined.

6. Add flour in small batches (approximately 1/2 cup at a time) to prevent a flour explosion in your kitchen. Once it's a uniform texture, set aside.

7. In a clean bowl, whip your egg whites until you get stiff peaks.

8. Fold egg whites gently into your batter that you set aside in step 5. Try not to squash it all together, you want to keep some of the airiness from the egg whites. Once combined, separate batter into three equal portions.

9. Gently add your food coloring to two of the bowls. If you wanted to do colors besides red and green, or add a third color to the white bowl, go for it! The red/white/green is "traditional" but there are no Rainbow Cookie Police.

10. Lightly spray three quarter sheet pans (9x13) with nonstick cooking spray, then line the bottom with parchment paper. Add each bowl of batter to a pan, then smooth out to approximately flat. It's fine if it's not perfect, just try to get it pretty even.

11. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the batter is totally set. It will get glossy then matte again. Rotate the pans halfway through to make sure everything cooks evenly.

12. Allow cake to cool completely, then spread half of your jam in a thin layer on top of whatever color you want to be your top layer (green was mine). Flip your pan of the middle color (white for me) on top of the jam, remove the parchment paper, then spread the rest of the jam over that layer, and add your bottom layer (red/pink for me).

13. Cover top layer in plastic wrap, then put one of your cookie sheets on top of it. Push it down to squish everything down, then put in the fridge with as many heavy items as you can fit in the top cookie sheet. Let cool/compact for at least 4 hours or overnight.

14. In a double boiler (or a regular pot with about an inch of water with a heatproof bowl on top of it, melt half your chocolate and add a teaspoon of canola oil. Stir constantly until melted and smooth. Remove plastic wrap and pour over your bottom layer (which is on top of the stack at the moment), smoothing it to an even coating with a rubber spatula.

15. Put everything back in the fridge for 30 minutes to let the chocolate set.

16. Flip your pan onto a cutting board and remove the parchment paper from the top layer. Repeat step 14 - I added a little "design" to my chocolate by taking a crinkle vegetable cutter like this one, and lightly dragging it across the melted chocolate. Add sprinkles if you wish, then put in the fridge for another 30 minutes to let the chocolate set.

17. Cut the edges off, making sure you cut far enough in to have your cookies look consistent. I lost a chunk of my red layer, so I had to cut one side in pretty far to make my "show cookies" have all three layers of cake and two layers of chocolate. Cut into 1 inch squares, and enjoy!

Notes:

* I used oat milk here, any variety of milk is fine. I think a whole dairy milk would make the cookies a little creamier/richer, but they're delicious with whatever.

** Whatever flavor of jam you have is fine if you think you'll like it with almond/chocolate flavors. I'd make sure it's seedless and not a preserve (aka no chunks of fruit) to keep the texture consistent. You can add more jam if you feel that half a cup per layer isn't enough! I thought I had raspberry jam at home when I was out shopping, then came home to find I had like a teaspoon left, so I used peach jam. Charles says "I like the cookies, but I wouldn't choose peach again."

*** Almond extract is optional here. It definitely punches up the almond flavor a lot, which some people love and others don't. I skipped it since I don't have any non-alcoholic extracts on hand, and we're avoiding all alcohol at the moment.

Batter going in the oven...

Unfortunately, I didn't take a TON of pictures in this process. It's so little work at each interval, so I was doing a lot of other cooking (meatballs, bagels, breakfasts for Charles, pork & homemade applesauce...) in between steps.

Second layer of chocolate setting...

You can see my wavy crinkle-cutter design here. There's no reason for it, it just seemed fun, which is also the reason there are sprinkles on the top. You can see that my red layer isn't visible on this side because I accidentally took a big chunk off it, which is why I had to cut so far in for my "discarded" edges.

Don't worry, there's no actual discarding. I still eat them. They just don't get featured as the blog post photo or make it out to guests/friends/relatives. I like to cut them into little bits and add them to vanilla bean ice cream, if I can hold off for long enough to not just eat them as-is.

Next time I make these, I'd probably look for a non-alcoholic almond extract to bring the flavor up a little, since I do really like almond, and make sure that I have raspberry jam. If I was feeling really insane...er...motivated... I might split the batter into five equal portions and make more colors to truly get to "rainbow" levels. I wouldn't want to double the recipe and keep the same width of the layers, though. The Rainbow Cookie should be approximately one-bite sized if you're home, two bites if you're in front of someone you want to maintain a good opinion of you and your manners. It'd be too tall to get the full effect if I just added extra layers, I think.

Have you made them? What's your favorite way to mix up the recipe?