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Gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with a secret ingredient.

Reprising this autumn-inspired cookie recipe from the 2010 archives, because so many of you are new to gluten-free baking - and may have missed it!

Fall usually stirs my culinary imagination to conjure seasonal soup recipes and Crock Pot comfort food. The key word here is usually. Historically. As in, what I've done before, come the Autumn Equinox. This time around the season's wheel, however, my restless spirit has been wandering far and wide and away from dreams of butternut chili and baked rice casseroles toward the tempting, sweeter things in life.

As in cookies.

Read more + get the recipe >>

I promise you they DO have 7 layers. Lets count. Chocolate, green, jelly, white, jelly, red, chocolate...see, there are 7!!! This recipe comes from my other Italian Grandmother. My Grandmother Josephine. Im not sure where she got them from but I know it was someone named Rosemarie because the recipe I have says "Rosemaries 7 Layer Cookies". Ill have to ask her if she remembers who that is she stopped making them years ago and passed it onto my mom who passed the job onto my sister and I. It wouldnt be Christmas for my family without these cookies and everyone who knows us always asks for them come Christmastime.

Like any other family we think our family recipe is the best. How could anyone not like their own family recipies they grew up on, right? Well anyway, our recipe is different from most because we do not use Almond Paste. Almond paste is the main ingredient (or only ingredient, Im not sure) in Marzipan and Pignoli Cookies. I just cant aquire a taste for that but lucky for me our recipe uses almond extract. The almond flavor isnt as in your face as some bakery versions in my very humble opinion. Whatever it is or isnt I know this...they are good! Great even! They take some time (and patience....right Danielle?) but they are well worth it.

I read on someone elses blog that they like to cut them with a serrated knife. I thought Id try it. It would be good if you wipe off the knife every time which I just dont have the patience for. So, you can see that it messed up the look of them a bit but they were still great tasting. My suggestion for slicing would be to take them out of the fridge once they chocolate is hard and let it warm up a bit before slicing. If you dont do that youll have some cracked chocolate. It isnt the worst thing in the world but if you want them to look as good as they taste you wont want that.

One more thing before I post the recipe (I know, I know, Im babbling today). On Sunday I complained to my Cousin Donnys wife Nicole that my layers arent always even. She said that she puts weight on them to press them together. I will try that next time for sure. Thanks Nicole for the tip!

Okay, Okay, heres the recipe!!!


Rosemaries 7-Layer Cookies


1 ¼ cup flour
3 eggs (large)
1 cup sugar
3 teaspoons almond extract
2 sticks (melted butter)
1 jar apricot butter or preserves or seedless raspberry preserves
6 oz. bag of semi sweet chocolate morsels
1 tablespoon of oil
Red and green food coloring


3 pans 11x7x1 ½ or approximate size

Mix in bowl with electric mixer (if desired), flour, sugar, almond extract,
eggs, melted butter.

Separate into 3 bowls evenly. After which you leave one bowl plain, in 2nd
bowl add 8 drops of red and the last bowl add 8 drops of green coloring.

Then in greased pans (or parchment lined pans) pour mixture so it covers all of the pan evenly. Bake for 10 minutes at 350.

Remove from oven, on wax paper on foil, first turn over green layer, coat
lightly with apricot, then white layer over that and coat with preserve.
Last red layer melt chocolate in pot with 1 tablespoon of oil. Coat one
layer with chocolate, refrigerate until hard then turn over wax paper or
foil. Coat second layer, let it get hard then cut and slice.