Rainbow Cookies

Reprinted with permission from Stanley Ginsberg's and Norman Berg's Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories from the Golden Age of Jewish Baking.

Rainbow Cookies

Makes 4-5 dozen

Volume	Ingredient	Ounces	Grams	Baker's Percentage
1 cup	Almond paste, at room temp	8	227	100%
1 cup	Egg, beaten	8	227	100%
½ cup	Shortening	4	113	50%
½ cup	Unsalted butter, at room temp	4	113	50%
1 tsp	Table salt	0.25	7	3%
1¾ - 2 cups	Cake flour, unsifted	8	227	100%
1½ tsp	Vanilla extract	0.25	7	3%
1½ tsp	Bitter almond oil or almond extract	0.25	7	3%
15-20 drops	Red food coloring	0.001	0.1
15-20 drops	Yellow food coloring	0.001	0.1
15-20 drops	Green food coloring	0.001	0.1
¼ cup	Apricot or raspberry jam, melted	2.8	79	350%

Simple Chocolate Icing

(Note: You can also use melted chocolate to cover)

Volume	Ingredient	Ounces	Grams
2¼ cups	Powdered sugar	10	284
¼ cup	Water	2	57
½ tsp	Light corn syrup or honey	0.13	4
½ tsp	Vanilla extract	0.07	2
2 tbs	Unsweetened cocoa powder

1. Preheat your oven to 400° F/204° C with your baking surface in the middle. In a mixing bowl, mash the almond paste using a fork. Using the whisk at medium (KA 6) speed, blend the almond paste and ¼ cup/2oz/57g of the beaten egg until smooth and lump-free, 3-4 minutes.
2. Add the butter, shortening, salt and remaining egg and beat until soft and light in color, 7-8 minutes.
3. Add the flour ½ cup at a time, followed by the vanilla extract. Continue creaming until the batter is evenly mixed, with a very light texture.
4. Divide the batter into 3 equal portions of about 10oz/284g each, and put each into a separate bowl. Add a different food coloring to each and whisk until thoroughly blended.
5. Pour the contents of each bowl into three separate well-greased 8" x 8"/20cm x 20cm square cake pans and bake until a tester comes out dry, 10-12 minutes. Remove to a rack and let cool thoroughly. (If necessary, you can bake the batters in several stages: simply remove the cake from the pan, rinse and dry, re-grease and bake the next color.)
6. Melt the jam in the top of a double boiler or on very low heat to avoid burning. Brush as thin a layer of jam as possible on top of the green layer and immediately put the yellow layer on top. Repeat for the red layer, so that you end up with a multicolored block, with the jam as the glue.
7. Wrap the block in plastic and return into one of the baking pans. Use a second pan on top to compress the layers. Add 2-3lb/1.5-2.0kg of weight and refrigerate for 24 hours.
8. Make the simple icing by heating the water and corn syrup to boiling, then stirring in the powdered sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla extract until well blended and lump-free. Take off the heat and let cool: the icing will be at optimal spreading temperature when it feels neither hot nor cool on your lips.
9. Remove the cookie block from the refrigerator and cut into four 8" x 2" x 2"/20cm x 5cm x 5cm bricks. Using a metal spatula, apply a thin coating of icing to the top and long sides of each brick in a single smooth stroke, if possible.
10. Let cool until the icing has almost hardened and use a sharp knife to cut the bricks crosswise into ½"/1.25cm slices. These freeze very well.

Inside the Jewish Bakery will be released October 15th and can be purchased on the Inside The Jewish Bakery website, on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca, or at your local bookseller.