Easter, and Transgender Flag Cookies
In which I participate in a SF Easter tradition, and learn that my cookie pushing skills need work.
We've had a fun-filled Easter, even though we skipped the eggs this year. We started the day with Wanda's Easter basket (with far too much candy; Peeps, which I love sentimentally but do not consider candy because they are the worst; The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America; and scented Flair felt-tip pens, which smelled far better than they needed to—well done, folks at Flair!). We watched It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown! which is the one where you get to see Woodstock's bachelor pad, commemorated here in an egg Wanda decorated last year:
But the main event was our outing to Dolores Park, right between the Castro and the Mission. Every year, for decades now, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence throw a massive Easter bash in Dolores Park. It's a major San Francisco tradition. There's a Hunky Jesus contest, an Easter Bonnet contest, performances, and thousands and thousands of people are decked out in their most colorful, joyful, ridiculous Springtime outfits.
A couple of local news articles, with lots of photos, to get a sense of the event:
Abigail Vân Neely
Olivia Hebert
The Sisters dedicate themselves to service to the LGBTQIA+ community, and for this year's Easter event, they put the focus on supporting the transgender community with the theme of "No Easter without the T."
My recent post on the importance of standing with transgender people right now:
Humu Trott
The weather could not have been more perfect: sunny blue skies, warm enough to wear whatever you want, but not hot. I wore a psychedelic paisley '60s satin housecoat and a big pink bonnet, and got lots of lovely remarks. And to go with the theme, I made a bunch of Transgender Flag Cookies to hand out to folks.
BUT. As I was trying to offer my cookies to folks, over and over again people were looking at me with a touch of side-eye, and asking if the cookies were "medicated." I was so confused... was it really the default for random cookies to be pot-laced? After about the sixth time in a row, one of the Sisters working at the First Aid table clued me in that the date also happened to be 4/20, and it alllll made sense.
So I figured out that I had to kinda aggressively say, "PLEASE ENJOY MY TOTALLY NORMAL COOKIES! THERE'S NO POT, I SWEAR! BUT THEY HAVE ALMONDS, SO DON'T IF YOU HAVE A NUT ALLERGY." And that didn't really convince people that I wasn't up to something weird. I was the stranger danger!
That said, LOTS of people did love my cookies and they seemed to make some folks' day. And I know that I need to work on my cookie foisting spiel.
I am pretty darned thrilled at how the cookies turned out. The recipe is a classic, but I had never made them before. Any Italians reading this may have clocked what these are right away: Italian Rainbow Cookies. At Christmastime, many Italian bakeries feature these cookies, meant to look like the Italian flag. They aren't just pretty, they taste really good: almondy and rich. The red-white-green layers make them ideal for Christmas, and I will definitely be making some for Christmas this year.
As luck would have it, baking genius Claire Saffitz posted a new YouTube recipe for Italian Rainbow Cookies just a few days ago, so I used her recipe as my starting point. Thank you, Claire Saffitz!
I took her recipe and scaled it up by 20%, which with five layers instead of three meant each layer was 72% as tall as the classic cookie's layers, to better match the dimensions of the Transgender flag. Of course you can use other colors, play with the number of layers, and create another flag variation!
Transgender Flag Cookies
Print the recipeIngredients
- 272 g almond paste (9.6 oz)
- 300 g granulated sugar
- 3 & ⅗ sticks of butter, softened
- 6 eggs
- 2.4 tsp vanilla
- .6-.9 tsp almond extract
- 312 g AP flour
- 4.2 g kosher salt
- 1 & ⅓ cup strained apricot jam
- 200 g white chocolate (7 oz)
Instructions
Follow the instructions in the Rainbow Italian Cookies video by Claire Saffitz, with the following modifications:
- The original recipe uses three quarter-sheet pans, for this recipe you need two half-sheet pans and one quarter-sheet pan.
- When it’s time to divide the batter, weigh your batter and divide that amount by 5. ⅕ of the batter will be the middle white layer, spread that batter in the quarter sheet pan. Divide the remaining batter in half (each will be ⅖ of the original batter), and put them in separate mixing bowls.
- Add pink food dye to one bowl, and blue food dye to the other. For the pink food dye, look for Red Dye #3 (#40 is too red), and for the blue food dye, look for Blue Dye #1 (#3 is too navy).
- Spread the pink batter into one half-sheet pan, and the blue batter into the other one.
- Bake the pink and blue half-sheets, at 350° for about 18 minutes. Rotate the pans halfway through.
- When the pink and blue sheets are done, put the quarter-sheet pan with the white layer in the oven, and bake it for about 18 minutes.
- Cut the blue and pink cakes in half, so you have two layers the same dimensions as the white layer.
- As directed in the video, assemble the layers, in the order blue-pink-white-pink-blue. Use ⅓ cup of strained apricot jam between each layer.