Venetians ( Italian Rainbow Cookies )

Watch as my mother shows you her technique to making these awesome Italian favorites

Ingredients ( all at room temperature )

3 sticks ( 1 1/2 cups ) butter ( room temp )
4 to 5 eggs ( pending size )( separated )
2 cups flour ( sifted )
1 cup sugar
8 ounces almond paste( broken up )
12 ounces apricot preserves
1 tsp pure almond extract
1/4 tsp salt
Few shakes cream of tartar
2 ounces semi sweet chocolate
Red, green and yellow liquid food coloring
Parchment paper
3 shallow 9×13 aluminum pans

Hi everyone i’m back on little laugh and cook italian again and today we’re gonna make my venetians which are one of our favorite holiday cookies they’ve got a lot of ingredients but well worth it okay well for those people that don’t know what a venetian is some people may call them rainbow

Cookies some people may call them italian flag cookies you know that wonderful almond plate taste cake that’s got the apricot preserves in the middle with the chocolate on top that’s what we call venetians and they’re definitely a staple at our holidays so what we’re going to do is we’re going to get all

The ingredients ready when we come back we’re going to be going through all of those to show you how to make a fabulous holiday venetian All right everybody here we are like my mother said there’s a lot of ingredients and like i always said if you need to go to the description box they’re all going to be listed there so you don’t have to run out and get that pen and paper all

Right but i’m going to start on this side it’s two ounces of mini chocolate chips that’s a cup of sugar now the recipe calls for four eggs but you know they have to be extra large to jumbo eggs if they’re tiny like the eggs my mother had she looked right after and

Went use five eggs okay so we have five large eggs but if you have extra large jumbo you can use four that’s eight ounces of almond paste that’s three sticks or a cup and a half of room temperature butter it’s 12 ounces of apricot preserves that’s two cups of finely sifted flour

Quarter teaspoon of salt a teaspoon of pure almond extract we have a green yellow and red food coloring and of course a cream of tartar how much she goes with just a few shakes i opened it up and there was no shaker and i’m looking at it just give me that

I went okay so this is one of those how much is that much it’s about that much not put in that much you know if you really want to measure i would say maybe like a quarter of a teaspoon or a third of a piece boot it’s just a stabilizer

For the egg whites to keep them nice and stiff so few shakes guys you know all right get that two shakes okay so now i’m gonna bring these the stiff piece which is probably gonna take four or five minutes all right everyone let’s see five minutes or so

And there’s your there’s your there’s your stiff piece right there all right you like those i do like them okay it goes off comes the whisk on goes the beaters right we’re gonna start slow start slow okay so here we go in here we’re gonna put the eggs gotcha slow it’s not small

Broken up almond paste and remember everything’s at room temperature can i start swole not yeah That means punching the head all right and here’s the almond paste now slow okay now the thing to remember about this is it’s going to take a while to get all this stuff incorporated and while you’re doing it you’re going to keep scraping down the sides of the bowl

So that you can get everything in and this really takes a good five minutes to get everything incorporated so as you can see it’s going to get caught and the bead is there yep yeah that’s okay you’re going to be able like that there you go yeah with your bad hand i’m sorry

My mother’s still recovering from hand surgery i got her hair making venetians with me what yeah that’s good and she’s right this is going to take a good amount of time to get this really incorporated and what we’ll do is we’ll show you what it looks like after it’s all really

Incorporated before we add a new flyer there you go nice there shouldn’t be any big chunks of almond paste or anything it should be all very very very creamy and smooth and you can hear how the motor is struggling on the hand mix that when you get when you hit that

That lump this is really thick stuff and then once we get most of the lumps out then we can put it on a medium and do it a little higher so let me put the timer on okay it’s been about five minutes and look at how nice and smooth this is

It’s really it’s like a cream so no lumps no nothing okay now we’re going to put the flour let’s mix the salt in the vodka yep and mix that in a little bit with a spoon yeah yeah now this can get a little bit messy yeah we’re going to start with

About half of it first and we’re going to go very slow and your best bet is to kind of mix it a little bit before you turn the paddles on because let’s face it you’re definitely going to be throwing some flour around go all right

So we got those two cups of flour well incorporated and now we’re going to give everything the final scrape right there i usually like a butter knife to try and get as much as i can off of the off of the beaters but again you know you’re dealing with almond paste it’s

Super sticky stuff so when i’m done scraping this get it all separated in three and we’ll be right back i’m gonna fold in the egg whites oh okay there you go what do i know okay now we’re gonna fold it gently gently all the egg whites thank you okay Gentle fold guys just until it’s incorporated and of course this is where you get that nice fluffy texture from all right okay so we’re gonna get this well folded in get all set up and when we come back we’re gonna separate it hit it with some

Food coloring and get it in the pans okay all right everyone hold on let me tell them what’s going on so uh our dough is ready got three bowls we got our food coloring but that’s on deck okay what we did was we took the apricot preserves and we heated them in the

Microwave for two minutes we gave them a stir for one minute so they are hot and we have to strain these and my mother was like we have to show them so we have to show you of course because this is an important thing so in they go to the strainer

And you know this bowl is hot so be careful all right all right good now my mother she’s going to strain those beautiful because this is going to go between the lace and you want it to be nice and smooth no big lumps or chunks of fruit

And this is yup this is how you do it excellent everything takes time this is part of the love right here you know maybe the average person might open up the job they just smear it on this is where the love comes in right when you really care about what you’re doing

This is it so and also over there you can see we have our three pins with oversized parchment paper butter uh butter knife and of course the um you call that thing man oh the spreader the the um there you go it’s a brush all right we’re good yeah okay so

Put this aside now because when it zooms we’re gonna spread that between the legs all right and now what we’re going to do is we’re going to separate our dough into three moles yeah all right and i like to do the one for one one one and it’s a little lagging on one

And one that’s good all right and i’m gonna go my mother deal with that food coloring water okay so for the green you can use about eight drops how many drops was that eight but you know if you want to use more use more if you want to use less use less

Now the yellow one i just put a couple because it’s already yellow but just to give it a little extra kick i put a little more yellow a little more yellow yeah and then the red is 10. really only 8 on the green but but 10 on the red

Who came up with these listen that’s the way it is see that i’m making videos like oh listen my mother tells me that’s gonna get that’s the way it is this one gets eight that one gets ten why because that’s the way it is they think i’m kidding when i say you

Know what my mother says hey it’s about that much it’s the way it is i ain’t kidding see that’s the way it is so i’m gonna get a green i like to call this grinch green yeah right yeah and this is more like a pink so it’s really not supposed to be red

It’s supposed to be like a pinkish okay and you could keep doing this because my hand all right guys now this is another pay attention to my mother because she’s going to show you how to butter these pans because it’s it’s an over underwater yep right you can use butter

Spray if you want and i do use it a lot but today i’m using the regular very soft butter and the first thing you do is you have to spread it in the bottom of this all around this is definitely not anybody’s diet just so you know oh and now

You put this piece of what you said in the parchment or wax paper and now you’re going to butter this too this way the um venetians will come out nice without sticking and uh we’ll show you so these so this is very important because if you don’t do this right

And your cake sticks in that pan it’s gonna be ruined and you’re never gonna get that perfect little square with the three layers this is what you need to do again a labor of love if you love these cookies like we do this is all work all

Right so we’ll finish these two and then we’ll be back how’s that spread it out we’ll be back and we’re done with the bottom all right everyone so we did our three pans with our butter our parchment paper we separated our three doughs and my mother she’s going to show you how to

Spread it now it’s not easy to spread so you got to have patience take your time because you really got to get in every corner because you don’t want the corners or the edges to burn so just make it as even as you can you have an offset spatula might make

Life easier yeah offset spatulas are beautiful can you just give me a knife yeah there you go don’t waste any should have seen her taking it out of the bowl scraped it down to another oh all right that’s one that’s one hold on okay this one’s going to the side she’s gonna wash

And we’re gonna do number two i’ll let you guys see two of them all right now second one now these are only going to bake for 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven okay and you just want the edges to be just starting to get brown you’ve overcooked these it’s curtains curtains because

They just they need to be nice and moist and um you know like spongy like you know nice angel food not even an angel food like you know a macaroon and guys just so you know my won me she was listen these are going to set off the smoke

Detector she went and grabbed my dad and he came and disconnected the smoke detector okay because the paper it tends to burn so be prepared when you’re putting these in the oven that you may set off some smoker mattresses now you can i use wax paper because i’ve been

Using wax paper for years but you can use parchment paper and parchment paper may not burn as much okay so that one’s done okay so we’re gonna clean that up we’re gonna do the third one when we come back we’re gonna be putting them in the oven

Okay everyone so they’re going in the oven for 15 minutes at 350. and what we’re going to do is we’re going to put one on the bottom long ways and two on the top vertical and we’re definitely going to switch these in about eight minutes all right

So when they go and we’ll be back okay everyone they just came out of the oven they’re super hot and my mother looked at me and said listen we have limited time to do this okay so keep your eyes on her and she’s going to show you

That’s the first one the first green green one see how it didn’t stick now you’re going to take that’s how the bottle works half of this i’m going to spread this nice on and this is going to seep right into that hot nice layer of um the

The almond paste these are my favorites when i think of christmas this is what i think of i love these okay now the next layer is the yellow one now you’re going to be very careful here so i have to see and turn this like this and we’re going to switch

And do one two three flip okay there you go guys she’s a pro she just made that look easy trust me it’s not that easy because it breaks up too but that’s all right if it breaks up just put it together no problem no problem yeah why i said models we we’re making

Venetians i go i need you by my side because she’s the master everybody has a master guys this is my master just so you know everything i learned i learned from her she learned from my my great grandmother her grandmother nanalina all those stories that i tell you trust me they’re true

And my mother was an excellent cook my grandma my aunt alice was the next little coke and my father used to make the gravy and the soup and the lentils oh delicious ready one two three quick and there you have it guys now what we need to do

Is we need to get a nice piece penny of uh plastic wrap plastic wrap yep now these you need these today you can only need them tomorrow because now we’re going to cover this with plastic wrap and i’m going to put this big heavy wooden

Uh plank on it so that it really weighs it down as it flattens it and this way everything gets nice now we need two more one each way this way oh okay so that’s okay this is it guys this is real real cooking right here ready there you go

Beautiful now everything’s nice and covered now we take this and this is heavy and we’re gonna and this is gonna weigh it down in the refrigerator overnight luckily i already have some in the refrigerator that i made the other day that we’re gonna pull out and show you how to put

The topping and finish them off so we’re going to get this in the fridge we’re going to get the ones that my mother made the other day and when we come back we’re going to be melting that chocolate and putting it on cutting them up and then we’re going to give you that

Awesome final product okay just melted my chocolate in the microwave and of course like my mother said she made these two days ago the ones we just made they’re in the fridge for 24 hours so this you’re not going to be able to do until tomorrow and this spreads nice on the hole

Yeah i’ll take that right from your mind see this is this is the bonus plan right here guys very thin layer and you want to make sure you use the um semi-sweet that’s one time i use milk chocolate right out of the way you see that guys and my

Daughters said to me ma you don’t taste the same and i still want to make them the same i said well i said i did use milk chocolate chips that’s it they said you you did it different we knew you did it different yeah it’s the same thing nope so i tell

You because you really need the flavor of that very deep uh semi-sweet chocolate you don’t want to put a lot because if you put a lot it overwhelms the taste of the venetians now don’t worry about these edges we’re going to cut these all off that’s the treat we need the edges you

Know that’s the bonus that’s the bonus all right so what we’re going to do we’re going to cut this all up we’re going to put it on a nice serving plating when we come back we’re going to give you that final product All right everyone here we are and as you can see that was really a labor of love and i have to say thank you to my mother even with her hand surgery she’s here today not only do we shoot venetians bowling daisy and the thanksgiving stuffing episode all in one

Day so ma i’m ready thank you you’re welcome i love you so much and here we go guys oh look at those they’re so perfect oh wonderful they’re so delicious they’re so moist and just that little bit of the preserves and a little bit of chocolate it’s just wonderful

I know you can’t eat too many because they’re very very rich and if you want to make something special for your holiday this is the recipe so from our host to your host we want you to have a very happy holiday season and don’t forget a little bit You