Silverthyme

A CookBook Recipes & Other Stuff or How to Keep the Kids from Developing Beriberi After They've Moved Away From Home

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Rainbow Cookies

These look hard, but they aren't, and they taste just like the ones we used to get in NYC bakeries!

  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 7 or 8-oz almond paste
  • 2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 25 drops red food coloring
  • 25 drops green food coloring
  • Jar apricot, raspberry or strawberry jam
  • 7 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped
 (This sounds impressive, but I really just use Nestle's chocolate chips ..)


Butter a 13- by 9-inch baking pan and line bottom with wax paper, then butter paper.

Heat oven to 350F.

Grate the almond paste.

Beat together almond paste and sugar until well blended, about 3 minutes. Add butter and beat until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Add eggs and almond extract and beat until combined well, about 2 minutes.

Reduce speed to low, then add flour and mix until just combined.

Divide batter among 3 bowls. Stir red food coloring into one and green food coloring into another, leaving the third batch plain. (about 1.5 cups each)

Bake red batter for 8 minutes, better to under bake it!

Spread jam on red layer - a Very thin layer - bake white layer the same way

Place white layer on red layer, spread with jam, bake green layer

Place green layer on white layer, let cool

Weight with baking sheet and refrigerate for at least 3 hours

Melt chocolate and spread over top, let set at room temperature.

Cut into bars - freezes well! ( so as not to eat them all before Christmas). These are hard to cut up because if when the chocolate hardens it has a tendency to crack - I use a serrated blade and kind of saw through the chocolate first and then press to cut.

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