This is one of my family's favorie cookies. I make them for Christmas and this year, I put an easter spin on them. I have uploaded a picture. Instead of green, white, and red, I made yellow, green, and purple. A couple of recommendations: You do not need to seperate eggs as recipe suggests (add them all in together at once), add 3/4 tablespoon almond extract (the real stuff not imitation), you only need raspberry preserves, spray the pans with a little spray oil or use some butter then put the parchment paper in the pan (this keeps the paper from moving around when you are spreading the dough, and get a large quantity of almond paste online (you will make this recipe a lot and it is a lot cheaper www.nutsonline.com). This recipe goes together fairly quickly but after the cookies are baked, that is where all the extra time is needed. I will usually start these three days before I need them. One day for the baking and building the layers, one day for speading the chocolate and cutting them up, and one day for letting them rest and allow the jelly to moisten the cake. One the third day you are ready to eat. I use a half-sheet pan and double the recipe. These cookies do not last very long in my house.

Reviewed On: Apr. 11, 2009

This is a great recipe. I used the recipe exactly as it is written with the exception of 2 things: 1) rolling the dough in the pine nuts is not necessary and it uses up a lot of nuts ... just put them on top. 2) I did not use parchment or aluminum foil as suggested, I use silpat silicone baking sheets on my cookie sheets and there was NO STICKING at all. Also, the baking time was more like 20 minutes for me, I am not sure if it because of the sides on my cookie sheets, just keep on eye on them and make you pull them out when they start getting a little brown. The dough is sticky but the flour helps with this. Almond paste is expensive from the supermarket so I ordered a 7 lb can of "American Almond" almond paste online. It can be found for about $35 at multiple sites ... it is well worth it. It can be stored for a long time in the freezer. I am from LI NY and these are very close to those I remember from the italian bakeries back home.

Reviewed On: Dec. 20, 2008