Biscotti

I can go round and round on a topic of desserts and coffee sweets  but nothing serves my tastes better than a biscotti or scone. When I owned my coffee shop, my Mom made these treats for the shop and I just fell in love with them. I wrote the recipes for the shop that she used and will share those recipes with you. Mom took my recipe and went even farther. She made biscotti and scones with any dried fruit and nuts she could find; they were awesome.

The original and typical biscotti is an almond cookie….we will honor the original type and prepare some almond biscotti dipped in a semi sweet chocolate for some accent.

I have played with my elapsed time tool and have actually munched a dozen or more biscotti since I posted this recipe. They are next to awesome with some tea or coffee. Not overly sweet and nice and hard like a great tea cookie should. Let’s make some biscotti.

2 cups all purpose flour

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup blanched whole almonds with skin off

You can buy blanched, skinned, slivered and toasted almonds, I usually just prep them by taking my sauce pan and immersing my raw almonds in boiling water for about 2-5 min. Then I dry them and pinch the skins off.

Prep the almonds:

I toast my blanched almonds in the oven at 350F until they are just turning a little brown. This brings the flavor out and makes your biscotti that much better.  Chop the toasted almonds coarsely and set aside.

In a mixing bowl mix your dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar and baking powder)

In second mix bowl whisk the eggs, vanilla and almond extracts

Pour the egg mix into the dry mix and with a spatula or spoon form a nice dough. Stir in your almonds and work them into the forming dough.

On a floured surface place the dough and divide in half.

With your hands roll out one of the dough balls into a log about 6-7 inches long

Transfer to baking sheet and do the other similarly

Bake at 350F for about 30-35 min or until the dough is firm and bread like

Rack and cool

Slice the baked loaf into half moon shaped segments and lay on parchment papered baking sheets. Look at my above photo as they should be in that form as you bake them again.

You will be baking them at 350F again but for about 10-12 min on each side. So you will flip them after 10-12 min and continue baking for 10 -12 min more. the object here is to let them crisp up into the hard cookie that they will become. Keep vigil on your first few batches until you get the timing down on the level of crispness you like best.

Remove from oven and allow to cool and harden.

Store bagged in freezer or covered cookie jar…

You have just made a basic biscotti that is delicious and great at social occasions. Enjoy!

Want to fancy up your biscotti…. I often make a little melted dark chocolate and dip the end of the biscotti in the chocolate after they have cooled from the second baking event. This gives them some “chef” like appeal. After you dip them place on wax paper until the chocolate hardens. If it is warm in the house you can refrigerate the dipped biscotti and the chocolate will harden quickly. I usually do not cookie jar these dipped types of cookies. They make a mess of my jar. I freeze these in sealed baggies.