Day 23 - Rainbow Cookies

These Italian treats are truly a labor of love as they take a fair bit of time to make.  In fact, it was a two day effort.  It didn't start out that way, I was going to make them as yesterday's cookie, but we had a little mishap that set us back a bit in our process.  As I was baking the 3rd layer, I had a problem flipping the cake over onto the wire rack and the result was that the third layer broke into too many pieces to use and Marissa ended up with a small burn from the pan touching her forearm trying to help me! So I had to redo the third layer (remake the cake taking 1/3 of the ingredients -- required some elementary school math  -- Good thing I live with a math wiz).  I made these cookies for the first time last year.  I had never heard of them and my sister, Lally mentioned that it was a favorite cookie of one of her friends. Also a friend from work, Polly, said she loved them and her sister made them every year at Christmas.  Polly shared her sister's recipe with a note that instead of using almond paste as the recipe stated, her sister used almond pastry filling.  I didn't listen to this instruction as all the recipes I had seen, used almond paste.  The result last year was good but not great.  But they were so pretty and looked great on the cookie tray, I decided I would try them again.  This year I made them with almond pastry filling as I did find another recipe that also said to do this and the result was a moister cake.  It was definitely an improvement. I was very happy with the result this year.  I hope my family thinks they were worth the effort and scars.

Ingredients:

1 can (12.5 ounces) of almond pastry filling (Solo makes -- in baking aisle)
1 and 1/2 cups butter, softened (plus more for pans)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs, separated
2 cups all purpose flour
6-8 drops of red food coloring
6-8 drops of green food coloring
1/4 cup seedless raspberry jam
1/4 cup apricot jam
12 ounces of semisweet chocolate chips, melted

Grease the bottoms of three 13x9x2 inch baking pans.  Line the pans with parchment paper; grease and flour the paper.  Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add almond filling and beat until smooth; Add egg yolks and mix until combined.  Add flour and mix until blended.  In a separate mixing bowl, beat egg whites with the whisk attachment of the mixer and beat until soft peaks form.  Fold into dough, mixing until thoroughly blended. Divide dough into three portions (about 1 and 1/2 cups, in each).  Color one with red food coloring, one with green coloring, and leave the third portion uncolored.  Spread batter in pans using an offset spatula.  Bake each color in prepared pans at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes (mine needed 12) or until edges are slightly brown.  Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then invert onto wire rack and remove parchment paper.  Cool completely.  Place green layer on a piece of plastic wrap.  Spread evenly with raspberry jam. Top with uncolored layer and spread evenly with apricot jam.  Top with pink layer.  Cover with plastic wrap and slide onto a baking sheet and set a cutting board or flat pan on top to compress layers.  Refrigerate 1 hour or overnight.

Cut into 1 to 1/12 inch wide logs.  Cover top and sides with melted chocolate.  Refrigerate to set.  Cut logs into small squares (1/2 inch).