Italian Biscotti - Excellent with a nice cup of coffee!

Biscotti is a traditional Italian cookie or biscuit.    There are several types of biscotti, most of which are hard and crunchy.   This is due to baking the biscotti twice.   The great thing about making biscotti yourself is that you can adjust the crunchiness with how long you choose to cook them.  This is great for folks who love this Italian desert, but have issues with the cookie’s hardness due to their teeth.



This Almond Biscotti is dipped in chocolate



Although almonds, pistachios, and peanuts are commonly found in biscotti, I tend to say away from using peanuts, due to the fact that so many folks are allergic to them.   I prefer almonds anyway!

Biscotti is an excellent Italian dessert that I love to dip in my coffee.  Many enjoy it with cappuccino or a dessert wine.

Enjoy this Italian Recipe!

Ingredients:

·         1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

·         4 eggs

·         4 1/2 cups white flour

·         1 Tbsp. baking powder

·         1 tsp. salt

·         1 to 1 1/2 cups of almond slices

·         1 Tbsp.  Lemon zest

·         2 tsp. vanilla extract

·         2 tsp. almond extract

·         2 tsp. anise extract

·         2 oz. of Italian brandy

Directions:

Prepare baking pans with either parchment paper.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt and gently stir, until evenly mixed.  Put this bowl aside.

Cream the butter by first softening it and then processing it in your mixer.

 Next, add the sugar, lemon zest, extracts, brandy and eggs and mix thoroughly.

Add the flour mixture slowly into the mixer and mix with the egg mixture and continue mixing until all of the flour mixture is incorporated. 

Add the almonds during the end stages of the mixing.   Mixing will break some of the almond slices, so you may want to save some for the end to incorporate by hand after mixing, if bigger pieces are desired.

Spread dough on baking pans in two "logs" (3 inches wide by 3/4 inch tall).

Bake at 350 degrees F. high in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until they are golden brown.

Remove the Biscotti logs from the oven and let cool about 20 minutes.

Slice the biscotti logs on an angle, making slices about ½ or ¾ inches.  Place each cookie on its side.

Bake the biscotti an additional 8 to 10 minutes.

Take the biscotti out again and flip each cookie over to the other side and bake again for 8 to 10 minutes.

Remove the biscotti and let them cool completely.

These biscotti are excellent on their own.    If you want to kick it up a notch, you can melt some chocolate.  I like to use Rapunzel Organic fair trade dark chocolate bars and I melt them in either a double boiler or use a little crock pot.   My big crock pot came with a small one as a bonus.   Although I buy these at my local supermarket, they are also available from Amazon, so I am going to be adding them to my Amazon store!   Is there anything that Amazon doesn’t sell?



This is an excellent chocolate!



You can either dip the end of the biscotti in the chocolate or coat the top of the biscotti. Place on a baking sheet or dish and put in the refrigerator to cool.  Lining the baking sheet or plate with either parchment paper or plastic wrap may make handling easier.   The plastic wrap works better for me.

Another variation is: after the chocolate is on the biscotti, sprinkle some crushed almonds on the chocolate immediately after coating the biscotti.

I hope you have enjoyed this Italian recipe!   Biscotti is an excellent addition to your Italian family cooking recipe book.