I promise you they DO have 7 layers. Let's count. Chocolate, green, jelly, white, jelly, red, chocolate...see, there are 7!!! This recipe comes from my other Italian Grandmother. My Grandmother Josephine. I'm not sure where she got them from but I know it was someone named Rosemarie because the recipe I have says "Rosemarie's 7 Layer Cookies". I'll have to ask her if she remembers who that is she stopped making them years ago and passed it onto my mom who passed the job onto my sister and I. It wouldn't be Christmas for my family without these cookies and everyone who knows us always asks for them come Christmastime.
Like any other family we think our family recipe is the best. How could anyone not like their own family recipies they grew up on, right? Well anyway, our recipe is different from most because we do not use Almond Paste. Almond paste is the main ingredient (or only ingredient, I'm not sure) in Marzipan and Pignoli Cookies. I just can't aquire a taste for that but lucky for me our recipe uses almond extract. The almond flavor isn't as in your face as some bakery versions in my very humble opinion. Whatever it is or isn't I know this...they are good! Great even! They take some time (and patience....right Danielle?) but they are well worth it.
I read on someone else's blog that they like to cut them with a serrated knife. I thought I'd try it. It would be good if you wipe off the knife every time which I just don't have the patience for. So, you can see that it messed up the look of them a bit but they were still great tasting. My suggestion for slicing would be to take them out of the fridge once they chocolate is hard and let it warm up a bit before slicing. If you don't do that you'll have some cracked chocolate. It isn't the worst thing in the world but if you want them to look as good as they taste you won't want that.
One more thing before I post the recipe (I know, I know, I'm babbling today). On Sunday I complained to my Cousin Donny's wife Nicole that my layers aren't always even. She said that she puts weight on them to press them together. I will try that next time for sure. Thanks Nicole for the tip!
Okay, Okay, here's the recipe!!!
Rosemarie's 7-Layer Cookies
1 ¼ cup flour
3 eggs (large)
1 cup sugar
3 teaspoons almond extract
2 sticks (melted butter)
1 jar apricot butter or preserves or seedless raspberry preserves
6 oz. bag of semi sweet chocolate morsels
1 tablespoon of oil
Red and green food coloring
3 pans 11x7x1 ½ or approximate size
Mix in bowl with electric mixer (if desired), flour, sugar, almond extract,
eggs, melted butter.
Separate into 3 bowls evenly. After which you leave one bowl plain, in 2nd
bowl add 8 drops of red and the last bowl add 8 drops of green coloring.
Then in greased pans (or parchment lined pans) pour mixture so it covers all of the pan evenly. Bake for 10 minutes at 350.
Remove from oven, on wax paper on foil, first turn over green layer, coat
lightly with apricot, then white layer over that and coat with preserve.
Last red layer melt chocolate in pot with 1 tablespoon of oil. Coat one
layer with chocolate, refrigerate until hard then turn over wax paper or
foil. Coat second layer, let it get hard then cut and slice.
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