Rainbow/Trilayer Cookies

First, start with some almonds.

Then boil some water.

Now blanch the almonds.

When they are done, they will float to the surface.

Now you need to peel them. All of them. By hand.

Now chop the almonds as finely as conceivably possible.

Use powdered egg whites so that the almond paste is safe to taste (hint: it is good).

Add in the confectioners sugar

Give it all a whirl in the food processor, then dig it out of there.

Now you get to clean this. Good luck with that.

Separate the egg whites and yolks (yeah, with your hands).

Soften some butter by not putting it in the oven for 5 minutes at 350 and setting off all the smoke alarms.

Almond paste goes in the stand mixer.

Sugar. Hey, it is cake after all.

Load it all up into the stand mixer.

Let it rip.

Time for some flour.

Soft peaks?

Folding = up and over, not round and round

Divide by three. Departmentally approved calculators only.

Forget to take pictures of the dyed dough until after it is on the sheet pans.

Red goes in first.

Then spread out the blue.

Out comes red to cool.

Blue is cooling too.

And the baking is done. Time for assembly.

Raspberry jam goes on the red layer.

Blue goes on next, and apricot jam goes on the blue layer.

The yellow layer tops it off, and the whole thing is wrapped.

Let it chill for a while under compression.

Melt some chocolate chips.

Get the cake out of the fridge.

Lay the cake out on something that can get covered with hot melted chocolate.

Cover the cake with chocolate, and sprinkle on sprinkles.

Be sure to get the edges too.

Chill for a while to solidify the chocolate.

Take the first cut, then take out of focus pictures.

Dice the cake for optimal sharing.

Piece of cake.

Recipe:

Citation: I put this recipe together from numerous sources, many years ago, and I don’t remember where I found each piece. These are really common cookies, and the recipe is most likely older than anyone currently living, so I obviously make zero claim to any originality here.

8 ounces almond paste (or make it from scratch – no one will tell the difference, and it triples the time this all takes, but you’ll know . . . )
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
4 eggs, separated
2 cups all-purpose flour
red food coloring (or whatever colors)
blue food coloring (or whatever colors)
yellow food coloring (or whatever colors)
0.33 cup seedless red raspberry jam
0.33 cup apricot jam
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1 standard unit of chocolate sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350F. Line three largish baking pans with parchment paper. You know what a rainbow cookie is, so you know how thick each layer should be. Just make sure that the size of the pans and the thickness of each layer works out correctly.

Beat together the almond paste, butter, sugar, and egg yolks. When mixture is fluffy and smooth, add the flour to form a dough. In a small bowl, beat egg whites until it is sort of fluffy. Fold (i.e. up and over, not round and round) egg whites into the dough. Divide dough into 3 equal portions and add one color to each (or leave uncolored. Whatever makes you happy). Remember that the dough is yellowish to begin with (from the egg) so think back to your grade school color wheel to figure out what color you will end up with when using a particular color dye. Spread each portion into one of the prepared baking pans.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until lightly browned. Carefully remove from pan and parchment paper, and cool completely on wire racks.

Place a layer onto a piece of plastic wrap large enough to wrap the complete assembled cake. Spread raspberry jam on that layer, and top with another layer. Spread apricot jam, and top with the last layer. Transfer layers to a baking sheet, and enclose with plastic wrap. Place a heavy pan/cutting board/backing sheet stacked with soup cans on top of the wrapped layers to compress them and prevent intra-layer delamination. Chill in the refrigerator for 8 hours, or overnight.

Remove the plastic wrap. Top it all with melted chocolate (I use semisweet chocolate chips, but dark chocolate would be even better, and milk chocolate would be objectively worse but people really like it for some reason), sprinkle on the sprinkles, and refrigerate for 1 hour, or until the chocolate is solid again. Slice it all into small squares for optimal sharing.

Yield: 100 or so, depending on size, etc.