Italian Rainbow Cookies

Hello fellow bakers and cakers!

Since I was a little kid delighting in bowls of Neapolitan ice cream in front of the TV, I've carried on a love affair with multicolored, layered desserts. Whether it's a refreshing yogurt parfait, a pretty diamond-shaped Girls Day mochi, or my mom's famous fruit trifle, I've always been enamored by the dainty, whimsical presentation of layered sweets.

And that is exactly why I have been dreaming of Italian Rainbow Cookies for months. These flashy petite treats contain all the goodness of almonds, dark chocolate, and fruit preserves baked into seven adorable layers, that, when stacked together, resemble the Italian flag. This unique combination of main ingredients makes for a complex and sophisticated cookie with a distinctly European flavor. It's the type of thing you can picture your archetypal Italian-American grandmother baking with love for family get-togethers.

So how did I sink my sweet tooth into this fanciful, half-cookie, half-cake, you ask? It all started when I was talking to my mom about the different desserts we bake fresh at T.O.P.S, and she suggested creating a "signature" dessert for which our restaurant could become known. Before I could say "Jumping Jellybeans!" Mom was mailing me all manner of sweet inspiration, both from local newspaper clippings and her own recipe collection.

One recipe for Neapolitan Refrigerator Cookies, cut from Betty Shimabukuro's "By Request" column in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, stood out in particular. Although this recipe was for a tri-colored slice-and-bake cookie, the column also mentioned a more elaborate, almond-fruit preserve cookie enrobed in melted chocolate.The idea stuck in my mind.

A few weeks later, I stumbled upon the lovely Italian Rainbow Cookie Cake on one of my new favorite blogs, Always Order Dessert. I was intrigued to learn that the blog's author, Alejandra Ramos, got her foot in the door of the baking business by selling dozens of these extraordinary cakes. My curiosity was piqued; this kind of stuff just had to be good.

I finally realized Fate was bringing me together with these awe-inspiring cookies when I re-opened my May 2011 issue of Bon Appetit ("The Italy Issue") and found yet another recipe for them! You can find their recipe for Italian Rainbow Cookies, which I ultimately used, here.

To tell you the truth, I was nervous about baking Rainbow Cookies. With all of the beautiful examples that had come before me, I had a lot to live up to. In between all of the mixing, melting, freezing, stacking, pressing, and my lone 9"x13" pan, I was also looking at an all-day baking project. And most of all, Steve, my primary taste tester, isn't much of a marzipan or almond extract person, so I wasn't sure he'd go wild for them. In the end, however, the cookies baked up splendidly and I had a blast! The cookies were dense and moist, with a slightly spongy texture and nice, even layers. Although I don't see myself making these glittery little gems on a regular basis, they might reappear in my kitchen over the holidays. As they say in the cooking world, it was love at first bite.