A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

To be honest, the rainbow cookie isn’t really a cookie. Technically it’s a thin slice of a dense, almond-paste-enriched, three-layer spongecake smeared with sweet jam and finished with a snappy chocolate coating. Also, it doesn’t even really resemble a rainbow, which, the last time I looked, had seven colors, none of them white. Some bakeries call the rainbow cookie a seven-layer cookie, granting “layer” status to the two thin coats of jam between the sponge and the chocolate icing on top and bottom, but that’s a stretch.

Even if the rainbow cookie is not accurately named, it’s still one of the more popular Italian-American bakery confections. And to be clear, the rainbow cookie is a decidedly Italian-American—not Italian—bakery creation. There is no direct counterpart to rainbow cookies in Italy, though some think that they were inspired by Sicily’s tri-colored gelato di campagna, a nougat with the same red, white, and green layers that resemble the Italian flag (maybe the inaccurate naming of the rainbow cookie also stems from the gelato di campagna, which, it’s worth pointing out, is not gelato at all).

In the Italian-American neighborhood of South Philly where I grew up, rainbow cookies were a common sight in bakery display cases (my favorites are from Isgro’s, and are worth braving the line that wraps around the block at Christmas time). In fact, if South Philly had a flag, I picture it red, white, and green, with narrow bands of chocolate brown on the top. It would, indeed, look like a rainbow cookie.

Today, you’re just as likely to spot a container of rainbow cookies at a local supermarket or deli, yet the vast majority of these mass-produced versions really disappoint. The factory-made ones may look perfect but don’t taste quite right, often taking cheap shortcuts like using artificial almond extract flavoring instead of real-deal almond paste—bleh! Which means that unless you live close by to a great Italian-American bakery where they’re still made from-scratch, your best chance of getting great ones is to make them at home. 

My recipe below is a straightforward, streamlined version of what can be a tricky dessert to make at home. You start with a fairly basic cake recipe that’s enhanced with ample almond paste to create the cookie’s signature nutty flavor and dense texture. The batter is divided into thirds; one portion left white, the second dyed green, and the last dyed red, spread into a paper thin cake layer then each is baked, cooled, then stacked and layered with a thin smear of raspberry or apricot jam in between. Once assembled, it’s topped with a chocolate coating that hardens into a snappy shell, and sliced into petit-fort-sized cookies that do indeed resemble the Italian flag, and not a rainbow. Read below for a few tips for how to perfect this bakery-worthy confection at home.

Key Steps for Making Bakery-Worthy Rainbow Cookies at Home

Use almond paste, not extract. The best product to use to create the cake’s signature almond flavor is almond paste. The natural oils in almond paste contributes to a denser, moister, more tender cake crumb with a noticeable almond flavor. I have seen store-bought versions of the cookies that rely on almond extract or even marzipan, but the final cookies don’t have the right balance of flavors when made with these products. The almond extract tastes one-note and artificial, while the marzipan is too sweet and lacks nutty flavor.

It can be easy to confuse almond paste and marzipan, but almond paste has about twice the amount of almond in it than marzipan does, and is a coarser, less sweet mixture. Marzipan is a smooth, very sweet confectionary paste with much more sugar than almond paste—all of which would have negative impacts on the batter for rainbow cookies. Almond paste is typically available in cans, cartons, or tubs in the baking aisle of most grocery stores.

Cream the almond paste with the butter, and sugar well. Adequately creaming butter and sugar is an essential step in many cake batters. Creaming traps air bubbles in the batter; and as the cake bakes in the oven, these bubbles expand, helping the cake rise. Without those air bubbles, the butter and sugar would form an ultra-dense paste that would give a cake the texture of a wet brick. It’s an essential baking technique that is used in this batter.

It’s also the best technique for incorporating the almond paste into the batter. The almond paste often comes out of its packaging crumbly and fairly solid. It’s necessary to soften it and break it down to a sandy texture so it incorporates evenly into the batter. The most common and best way to do this is by first mixing the almond paste thoroughly with the sugar, then creaming it with the butter. This helps break it up and distribute it evenly. Note, though, that the mixture never fully turns as “light and fluffy” as when creaming sugar and butter alone. The creamed almond paste mixture has a sandy texture with a few small lumps of the almond paste remaining, but there is still plenty of air trapped in the mixture to ensure the thin cakes rise properly.

Don’t be stingy with the food dye. If you want your cookies to really resemble the Italian flag, you’ll need to make sure the dyed portions of the batter are vibrant and deep before baking. Once the batter bakes, the cooked cake’s color will be more muted than when it was when raw. So to compensate for this, the dyed batters need to have a rich, saturated color. I call for 1/4 teaspoon of gel food dye here, but not all food dyes are created equal, and different brands can have varied potency; you may need to add more.

The recipe will also work with liquid food dye, but will likely require even more. So depending on the brand and style of food dye you use, you might need to adjust the dye amount accordingly to reach the visual cue. Keep the food dye handy and continue to add more, a few drops at a time until you’ve reached your desired shade of red and green.

Alternatively, if you’d rather avoid large amounts of food dye in your rainbow cookies, do the opposite and be as stingy as you like, or leave it out entirely, but know that the finished rainbow cookie won’t have the same visual impact. 

Gently compress the assembled cake before topping with chocolate. Once the batter is prepared, it’s divided in thirds, then dyed accordingly and baked into three very thin cakes. Once cooled, the cake layers are carefully stacked with a thin layer of jam in between each cake layer. This assembled cake is pretty fragile at this stage, and if you were to top it with chocolate, then cut into it right away, the cake would tear.

Refrigerating the cake for at least two hours, with a sheet pan centered over top to gently weigh it down and compress the layers transforms the confection from a delicate layer cake, to a sliceable, denser cookie texture. 

Cut with confidence. Once the cake is assembled, chilled, and topped with its chocolate coating, it’s time to cut it into individual cookies. But the alternating layers of a soft delicate cake and spreadable jam topped with a hardened chocolate shell topping can present a problem when it comes time to slice it, and while a smushed and crushed rainbow cookie will still be delicious, a lot of its visual impact will be lost if not cut properly. 

Calm confidence is the secret to neatly portioning each individual cookie. You’ll need to use a very sharp serrated knife, as its many teeth will make easy work of sawing through the many layers of delicate cake without compressing them down into the jam below and triggering a full-blown structural collapse.

You may lose a few top chocolate shards along the way, but if you use long slicing strokes, this shouldn’t happen. Make sure to slide the serrated knife back and forth where you want to cut while using your free hand to stabilize the cookie; it’s important not to press down hard as you slice, or you risk squishing it or shredding the chocolate. For the cleanest cuts, dip your knife in hot water and wipe it dry between each portioning each slice.

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