These beautiful bastards taste delicious, are festive, and dip into my Italian heritage a bit. They take some time to make so definitely read through the directions, pop open a bottle of wine, and blast some Christmas music (or heavy metal, or rap, whatever) while you bake away. These cookies aren’t the kind you can just randomly whip up two hours before you need them, so have some fucking patience.

Ingedients:

7 ounces of almond paste – side note here – this bitch was hard to find at my local grocery store, so I got it on Amazon

Non-stick cooking spray

1 cup unsalted butter

4 large eggs

2 tsp. almond extract

1/4 tsp salt (I prefer pink Himalayan salt for these)

2 cups all-purpose flour

15 drops of red food coloring

15 drops of green food coloring

1/4 cup raspberry preserves

1/4 cup apricot preserves

12 oz chocolate chips. I prefer dark chocolate but semi-sweet is just fine!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray three separate 9×13″ pans with non-stick oil or butter spray. Line each pan with parchment paper and spray parchment paper with oil too. (I don’t have 3 9×13 pans so I just baked one cake at a time.)

In a stand mixer using the paddle, break the almond paste into chunks and add to the bowl. Then add in butter and sugar and cream ingredients together. (It takes a few minutes so go have that aforementioned wine while you wait.)

Next, add in the eggs one at a time, mixing after each egg. Add in the almond extract and salt. Mix briefly then add in flour with a spoon just until combined.

Split the dough into 3 equal portions. I just eye-balled it and it turned out fine but if you don’t like to throw caution to the wind you can weigh it with a food scale. (Who has fucking time for that? We’re lucky I’m making a seven-layer cookie!)

Add red food coloring to the first batch, green to the second, and leave the third batch alone. The third batch wants to be nude man.

Spread each batch into its own baking pan (or if you’re me and only have one, just bake one at a time.) Bake 10-12 minutes where the sides will start to brown slightly but if you insert a toothpick in the center, it should come out clean. In Colorado, I baked mine 11 minutes and they were perfect.

Remove from oven, place on a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Cookie Assembly:

On a large sheet pan, place a large piece of plastic wrap on it (large enough that you can completely wrap all three layers of cake in it.) On top of that, place a piece of wax paper large enough that the cookies will fit on it and not stick to the plastic wrap. (So just cover the bottom of your sheet pan in wax paper.)

Invert the green layer cookie onto the wax paper and cover with apricot preserves. Then top with the plain cookie and cover that with raspberry preserves. Then top that with the red layer.

Wrap the large cookie with the plastic wrap and place a cutting board on the top of it so that it helps squish the layers together. Place in the fridge 4 hours or overnight if you’re fucking beat by this point.

Microwave half the bag of chocolate chips for about 1 minute and stir to ensure it’s all melted.

Use a knife (I used a pastry knife) and spread it on top of the cake. You can use a fork to make decorative swirls in it if you’re a fancy fuck.) Then, place the cake back in the fridge for 30 minutes to let the chocolate harden.

Remove from fridge, and flip that bitch over. Melt the rest of the chocolate chips and cover the other side of the cake with it. Put it back in the fridge and let the chocolate harden another 30 minutes. (Do you see now why wine is necessary?!!)

Remove from the fridge and use a serrated knife to cut through. I cut them in 1″ squares but make them as big or little as you like.

Enjoy and don’t make them again until next year since they took you two days!