Sasha's Kitchen: Tri-Colored Classic Rainbow Cookies

Ahhh, rainbow cookies. These tri-colored, almond flavored cookies in the traditional pink, green and yellow colors have long been my favorite baked goods. I have been eating these since I was a kid. In my experience, Jewish bakeries and Italian bakeries will make the very best rainbow cookies. I always thought they were a Jewish tradition, but they are really Italian, and are supposed to represent the Italian flag. You can find some delicious rainbow cookies in either Brooklyn or in Manhattan's Little Italy. They're addictive and delicious, and a long-held favorite of mine. In fact, I have loved these cookies for so long, I have even received a couple of rainbow cookie birthday cakes over the years. A couple years ago, I found a great recipe for making my own rainbow cookies. I have pretty much perfected it at this point, where my cookies are bakery quality gems. This is a great and impressive dessert to bring to a party, so I wanted to share these cookies and the process to make them here. For me, these bring back memories of my childhood, since they have long been my favorite dessert.

My recipe for these cookies is derived from a 2007 edition of Gothamist article. It is a very well written piece that details a bit of the history of these cookies. I love the part where they quote the Princess Bride (one of my favorite movies)  in describing how Little Italy is mixed with Chinatown ("Never get involved in a land war in Asia") in New York. Also, I have not yet tried the rainbow cookies at Isaac's Bake Shop in Midwood (pretty far out in Brooklyn) but I do plan to make the trek out there to try them.

Rainbow Cookies
12 ounces almond paste (careful, this is not the same thing as marzipan)
1 C (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 C granulated sugar
4 large eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 C all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
Green and red food coloring
1/4 C seedless raspberry preserves
1/2 C apricot preserves
15 oz. semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped


The first step in making these delicious and colorful cookies is making the three layers.  It is easier than you probably think it would be. Use three 12 x 8 baking pans and spray with PAM or line with parchment paper (I've always used the PAM to be honest, and it works). Grate the almond paste in your food processor. In the basin of a KitchenAid Mixer, mix the butter on medium-low speed until smooth using the paddle attachment. Increase to medium-high and add the almond paste. Beat until lighter in color, for about two minutes. Pour in the sugar and beat for another minute. Next, add the four egg yolks and vanilla and beat well to combine. Reserve the egg yolks in a bowl for the next step.  Combine the salt and flour, and slowly add to the dough in thirds, before setting aside.


In a separate bowl, with an egg mixer, beat the egg whites on high speed for about four minutes until nice and fluffy, like if you were making a souffle. You can add a bit of cream of tartar. If you remove the other stuff from before from the mixer, you can do this in your KitchenAid using the whisk attachment.


Using a spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the mixture. This is a bit tough and may take some work and time. The dough is pretty thick and dense so it is difficult to fold in the egg whites, but it can be done with a bit of effort. 

Next, divide the batter into thirds. Leave one bowl plain and dye the other two with red and green food coloring respectively. Grocery store quality food colors work perfectly for this recipe to get the colors right, rather than the fancy gel ones that I usually use with cupcakes.

Spread the layers into each of the three pans, evenly. This takes a bit of time to spread each perfectly evenly and they will seem like they are very thin, which is just fine. My husband has a lot of patience for this, so he does this part.


Bake the layers for 10-15 minutes until the layers are firm to the touch and are just the slightest bit brown. Obviously, you do not want to let the layers brown, and they are done when they are firm, and only the slightest bit brown around the edges.


Flip each layer gently out of the pan (after you allow it to cool) onto a piece of plastic wrap. This takes a bit of practice so as to keep the layers in tact. Take the green layer and spread with the raspberry jam and add the yellow layer on top of that. Then spread that layer with the apricot jam and add the pink layer on top of that. Press the layers for 15 minutes with a really heavy book, like the Beatles Anthology. Then seal the surface with a layer of apricot jam that you bring to a boil with 2 T of water. Allow to set for a half an hour.

To make the tempered chocolate, melt the chocolate using a double boiler. If you do not have one, you can use a metal bowl inside a large pot of boiling water. You will want to finely chop the chocolate before doing this, or use chocolate chips like I do. As the chocolate warms, stir until the chocolate is fully melted. But don't allow it to cook further, boil or otherwise change in chemical composition. Spread on the top and sides of the rainbow cookie layers. Allow to cool for an hour in the refrigerator and then slice into cookies. 

Sasha's Kitchen: Tri-Colored Classic Rainbow Cookies

Sasha's Kitchen: Homemade Amaretto & Amaretto Hot Chocolate

Today was blizzard day across most of the east coast.  I wasn't working today, so I decided to quickly make another liqueur, this time, the almond flavored Amaretto.  It was surprisingly simple to make and turned out to be the perfect treat for the snow day, since a shot of Amaretto added to your hot chocolate makes the most wonderful Amaretto Hot Chocolate known to mankind.  We still don't have half as much snow as they have in D.C. (there's some kind of thrill I get from feet and feet of snow piled up that has never worn off for me, even though I grew up in Rochester and saw more snow that the Eastern Seaboard could possibly imagine).

For our own snow day treat, mix up your own Amaretto at home, and make some Amaretto hot chocolate to warm up those fingers and toes.  Or throw in some ice with a couple of shots and some sour mix, to make an Amaretto sour.  The quality of the recipe I used - an original based on the recipe from the bestselling Disaronno Amaretto was excellent and I could not taste a difference at all from the top brands of Italian Amaretto on the market.

You could definitely cut this recipe in half if you don't need a lifetime supply.  However, this makes a wonderful gift, to if you make the full recipe, bottle it and give it to your friends.  While you are at it, try making Limoncello, too!

Make Your Own Amaretto (Adapted from this recipe)

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar
2 cups of water
4 cups of vodka (I used Stoli)
1/3 cup Almond Extract
5 tsp Vanilla Extract

This is super easy to make.  Just dissolve the sugars in the water over medium high heat, until it boils and all the sugars dissolve.  Remove from the heat and add the vodka and extracts.  Put in decorative bottles with ribbons and share with your friends.

For a bit of zing on a snowy winter day like today, add a shot of Amaretto to your hot chocolate.

Amaretto

Sasha's Kitchen: Homemade Amaretto & Amaretto Hot Chocolate

Sasha's Kitchen: Rainbow Cookies

Rainbow cookies, my all time favorite cookie, were one of the first things I tried to make in the days prior to owning an artisan mixer. It was a complete and total disaster. Since acquiring the mixer, however, I have had considerable success with this recipe. The recipe I used, from Gothamist, can be found here. If you are not familiar with these cookies, perhaps you remember them as tri-colored cookies (always green, yellow and pink) flavored with marzipan. They are actually not made with marzipan at all, but with almond paste which is similar.

These cookies have long been my favorite dessert. I loved them as a kid. I've actually had two birthday cakes over the years that were simply an enormous unsliced rainbow cookie - one from my mom when I turned 18 and one from my husband when we were dating (my 27th birthday?)

To execute this recipe, I made a couple variations which basically allowed me to do it all in one day, and actually within a few hours. First, I broke up the almond paste in my cusinart miniprep food processor. Then in the artisan mixer, I combined the butter, almond paste, egg yolks and vanilla according to the instructions in the recipe (see link above). The I mixed the flour and sugar in a separate bowl and slowly added to the mixer. Then I set this aside and whipped the egg whites to form stiff peaks, as discussed in my previous post about souffles. This is actually relatively easy to do and I did not have the difficulty mixing them in as the recipe suggested that I should.

The next part, always done by my patient husband Brad, is to separate the mixture into third and dye one part green, one part red with food coloring. Leave the third part plain. The Brad uses a spatula to carefully spread into separate pans to make layers. The layers were pretty thin, but not too thin, and even.

Then we baked the layers at 350 F for 10-15 minutes until very VERY lightly browned. Then (and this is the hard part!), Brad somehow flips the pans to get each layer out while I spread the jams lightly between the layers.

I will press with a large book (in my case the Beatles Anthology) for about an hour, and this is usually sufficient.

The next step is to make the tempered chocolate in a double boiler. I do not have a double boiler, so I just boil some water and put the chocolate in a small mixing bowl and it melts just fine. Once this is complete, I spread it over the top and sides of the cookies.

The I refrigerate for about an hour and slice.

I was so happy when I figured out this recipe, as I had finally figured out my absolute favorite dessert since I was a little girl.

Sasha's Kitchen: Rainbow Cookies