Many years ago, I was in a meal exchange group. This was an amazing gift for a mom of little, little kids. There were eight of us and we would each make eight recipes of our chosen dish for the month and then pass them out to the other members. So we all went home with eight meals in our freezer. It was awesome! At Christmas time, we added a cookie exchange to the meal exchange and that is where this recipe came from. One of the awesome ladies in my group, shared a FEW of these raspberry almond bars and she (somewhat reluctantly) gave me the recipe. This quickly became my husband’s favorite recipe.

When we became a paleo family, I knew this was a recipe I HAD to figure out. The key ingredient in these cookie bars is the almond paste, an ingredient you can find in your grocery store (and it’s usually gluten free). At the time I first created this, I was needing to stick as close to paleo as possible, so I made my own almond paste. I’ll include that recipe for you in the notes section below the recipe. If you can take a few short-cuts in your diet from time to time, using the store-bought almond paste is a real time saver.

Either way, this recipe is delicious and special and not your typical Christmas cookie.

Do you have a special Christmas treat that always shows up on your holiday table? Let us know in the comments!