Number Three: Bake Petit Fours

I didn’t actually bake petit fours. I made rainbow cookies instead. They are sort of the same thing. When I think of petits fours (which are these French pastry things… Petit four Wiki page) I think of several thin layers of pound or sponge cake with raspberry between the layers cut into teeny, tiny little squares, covered with chocolate and decorated. Rainbow cookies are much the same, just way more awesome.

Rainbow cookies are an Italian-American dessert, mainly New York-Italian-American. For the longest time I thought they were a Jewish thing, but on Long Island, Italian and Jewish are essentially the same thing. Seriously ask any Jew or Italian from Long Island. One and the same.

Anyways, Rainbow cookies are SOOO Italian that they are even made to look like the Italian flag. Each layer is colored either green, red, or white. Well, the white layer is actually yellowish and is not colored, but is just left in its original cake color to represent white. The layers are made from an almond cake and there is a raspberry or apricot jam between each of the layers. And then the whole thing is topped with chocolate. Sometimes people add sprinkles.

I grew up eating these every Saturday after services at our synagogue (which is why I thought they were Jewish). I would go from cookie tray to cookie tray trying to find as many rainbow cookies as I could. There were only a few of them per tray and always cut so small. Then my friends and I would take our cookie finds to the coat closet and share. Another great thing about them is they can be made to be kosher for Passover. Which I love because my birthday usually falls over Passover and I hate not getting to have cake, but I loves me a whole tray of rainbow cookies!

These were easier to make than I thought they would be. However still a little complicated. Well, more time consuming than complicated. I decided not to make mine Italian flag colored. They were supposed to be lime green, orange and purple, but I ran out of purple coloring and tried to mix blue and red, which didn’t work. So they are dark redish purple, green and orange.

I am very happy with the results. They taste is a little extra almondy, because I took the advice of the pastry chef who commented on All-recipes.com saying they always add almond extract. I might skip that step next time. Don’t get me wrong though, I could still eat the whole plate. But I won’t. I promise.

Get the recipe HERE

So one more goal down. 30 days left and 9 more goals to go…

Above: Never used parchment paper before, but it rocks!

Below: Just out of the oven!

Above and Below: At this point in the process it didn't look very promising. I was getting worried. Especially when the entire green layer broke in 3 pieces... but I glued it back together with raspberry jam.

Above: But hey, they turned out great!

Below: And Delicious!