I tend to save biscotti for wintertime baking because making them, while easy, involves a bit more time working near a hot oven than I usually want to spend on a hot summer day. That being said, one recipe for biscotti makes a lot of cookies – cookies that keep very well, where one batch will last you quite a while – and they go just as well with iced coffee and iced tea as they do with their hot counterparts!
These are Almond and Toffee Biscotti, made with whole chopped almonds and bits of English toffee. Toffee and almonds are often paired together in other candies, making it no surprise that they should come together here. I used whole almonds and gave them a rough chop before adding them in. You can use toasted almonds, but these biscotti spend enough time in the oven that the almonds will toast up well all on their own. The toffee bits add a little extra sweetness to the finished cookies and make them a little more interesting than your standard almond biscotti.
The cookies are first baked as a log of dough, which gives the structure a chance to set up. The logs are sliced into individual cookies, then the cookies are baked a second time until they are dry and crisp. The finished biscotti will be very crispy, but fortunately they have a light structure to them that makes them easy to bite into and not rock hard. Drizzle them with a little bit of melted dark or milk chocolate after they’ve cooled to give them a little bit of an indulgent edge.
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Most muffin recipes make a dozen muffins. Sometimes I can get through the whole dozen – with a little help, of course – and sometimes I just can’t. Leftover muffins are usually good for a day or two, but most don’t hold up well longer than that. One solution is to freeze them when they are fresh and defrost them when you want to eat them. Another solution is to make muffin biscotti with the leftovers.
I made these by slicing up muffins thinly and baking them at a low temperature until they were dry and crisp. They don’t get quite as crispy as regular biscotti, but still crisp enough to dunk into a cup of coffee! The center slices make the best biscotti, but you can slice the ends and toast them up to get the most bang for your muffin.
This little trick works best with muffins that don’t have too much fresh fruit in them – especially if that fruit is some type of juicy berry – simply because they will crisp up better that way. It’ll still work with fruitier muffins, they just won’t have quite the same finished texture as those that are without.
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Chocolate covered strawberries are a classic treat for Valentine’s day, but strawberries aren’t exactly at their peak in February. It’s possible to find fresh ones, of course, though your options are either going to be fairly expensive hothouse berries or berries that simply don’t have the flavor of those at their peak later in the season. I decided to make these biscotti as a stand in for the classic, using strawberries in the biscotti and dipping the cookies themselves in chocolate.
I didn’t use fresh or frozen berries in these biscotti; they’re too juicy for the crispy, dry cookies. Normally, I’d use dried fruit in biscotti, but this time around I decided to use freeze-dried strawberries. These berries have zero moisture content and incorporate easily into any batter without changing the texture. They contribute a good strawberry flavor (not as much as a fresh berry, though) and still allow the biscotti to maintain their crisp, perfect-for-dipping-in-coffee texture.
The basic cookie has no added fat and bakes up to be fairly crunchy, not tender and crumbly. The cookies aren’t hard – thanks to the relatively high egg content – but they really are meant to be dunked in coffee or tea for optimum enjoyment (although I really do like to eat them plain). Use any kind of chocolate you like for dunking. I opted for dark and white chocolate, but milk would work out very well with these, too. And don’t forget to save some for your sweetheart!
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Cherry Garcia is a flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that was developed as a kind of tribute to Jerry Garcia, but it is so popular (it is the brand’s top selling flavor) that at this point the name can almost act as a stand in for anything with bing cherries and chocolate chunks and people will know exactly what flavors they’re going to be getting.Here, I used both dried bing cherries and dark chocolate chunks in a simple biscotti recipe.
This recipe is my favorite for biscotti, as it turns out cookies that are crispy and crunchy – absolutely perfect for being dunked in a cup of coffee or tea – but not so hard that you’ll break a tooth biting into one without dipping. In fact, they almost seem to shatter in your mouth when you bite into them. The secret to achieving the texture is not to over-handle or over-flour the dough as you work with it. Once you have mixed all the ingredients together, drop spoonfuls of dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet in a log shape, then gently press with floured hands into a long, flat rectangle. Use only enough flour to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands. Then bake the logs, slice them into individual cookies and bake again until dry.
My biscotti are quite long (again, I do this so they’re easy to dip), but if you prefer shorter, smaller cookies you can certainly shape the logs of dough into any size rectangle you like. The second baking time will probably be less for a significantly smaller cookie, so just keep an eye on the oven as you work.
Biscotti are a fantastic cookie to send as part of a holiday gift because, packed in an airtight container, they can last for a few weeks and still maintain their freshness. Not that they’ll last that long, of course, but it’s nice to know just in case.
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The isn’t much I can say about these. The spicy taste of an oatmeal cookie with the crunchiness and longevity of a biscotti. How can you go wrong?
The oatmeal gives the cookie an even lighter texture than usual, so I found that dipping these was unnecessary (though still delightful). This is definately a new variation on my usual recipes that I will use again and again.
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