Italian Almond Cookies

These cookies have a soft cake texture, made with almond paste, filled with apricot jam and coated with dark chocolate. They are not too sweet, easy to eat and simply delicious. Plus they look great. A nice addition to coffee or tea anytime of the day. The steps to make them are simple, once the layers have been 'glued' together with the apricot jam they have to be weighted down overnight, and then they're pretty much done. Try them.

In a mixer with a paddle attachment put:
12oz almond paste
1C sugar and mix till smooth.
Add 2C soft butter and paddle, then add:
6 yolks, paddle on high for 4 minutes until fluffy.
Slowly add 2 3/4C all purpose flour and 1t salt, mix till combined.

In a separate mixer add 6 egg whites, whisk on medium high, when it starts frothing slowly add 1/3C sugar, whisk into a meringue, medium peaks. Fold this into the almond mixture until no streaks remain.

Divide the batter evenly in 3 bowls, color 1 with red food coloring, 1 green food coloring and the other as is. It takes a good amount to get deep colors, brown food coloring was added to the red and the green to get a deeper color.

Spray 3 13x9" sheet pans, line them with parchment paper.
With a large offset spatula even out the batter. Bake about 12 minutes at 350F. Let them cool fully.

Flip the green one first onto a large sturdy cutting board, or a larger sheet tray lined with parchment, spread a thin layer of apricot jam onto that, then flip the white layer, repeat with the jam, lastly flip the red layer. Wrap the whole cake with plastic wrap to not dry out. Cover it with a sheet tray and weigh it down over night with cans, or anything heavy. Place in the fridge.

Next day, melt 8oz of bittersweet chocolate in the microwave and pour half of it over the cool red layer. Place it in the freezer for 10 minutes. Flip the cake over and spread the other half of melted chocolate over the green layer. Place in the freezer for about 30 minutes to cool the whole cake. It will be more sturdy to cut and will stick together.

Now with a large serrated knife cut the trim off of the edges, and then cut 1/4" strips, and cut those strips into 1" cookies, repeat. You can wrap the cookies and freeze them if there are too many, they will stay nice and fresh.
In the photos above we doubled the ingredients giving us thicker layers, up to you. Enjoy.