New All Around

Okay, so the original plan was to do two recipes for three days to catch up with my Advent calendar plan. But then I ran out of storage space. So just the one recipe today, and I'll do two later this week to catch up, once I have a chance to ship more cookies and brownies off to work with my husband.

Recipe #5 (a.k.a. today's) was a brand new one for me: Biscotti. I used one from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook since I've been pleased with many of their other recipes in the past. Their base recipe is for almond biscotti, but they have 3 variations: pistachio, chocolate chip, and lemon-anise. I chose to make the chocolate chip ones because, hey, everyone loves chocolate! (Okay, maybe not EVERYONE, but I don't know anyone who doesn't.) The recipe is as follows:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chocolate chips (I prefer milk chocolate chips in all my baked goods, but I was unsure how sweet this recipe would be, so I used 1/2 cup of semisweet chips and 1/4 of milk chocolate chips. You, of course, should use chips that appeal to your tastes.)

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.

2. Beat the sugar and butter together in a large bowl using an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 6 minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla extract, scraping down the bowl and beaters as needed.

3. Reduce the mixer speed to low and slowly mix in the flour mixture until combined, about 30 seconds. Mix in the chocolate chips. (I use an electric stand mixer, so I mixed the chips in with a spatula.)

4. Split the dough in half and use floured hands to press each into a 2- by 13-inch loaf, spaced about 3 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until the loaves are golden and just beginning to crack on top, about 35 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking.

5. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, lower the oven temperature 325 degrees.

6. Transfer the loaves to a cutting board using a wide metal spatula. Slice each loaf on the diagonal into 1/2-inch-thick slices using a serrated knife. Lay the slices about 1/2 inch apart on the baking sheet.

7. Bake until the slices are crisp and golden brown on both sides, about 15 minutes, flipping the slices over halfway through. Transfer the biscotti to a wire rack and let cool completely before serving, about 30 minutes.

Note: This recipe creates a softer biscotti rather than the traditional, dry Italian cookie.

Sounds easy enough, right? Thankfully, it pretty much is. I had some concerns about my dough just after mixing, namely that it didn't look so much like a mound of dough as crumbled bits of dough. Since this is my first foray into the baking of biscotti, I'm not sure if this is normal or not. To address my concern, and get the dough into what I felt was a workable state, I turned out the dough crumbles onto a floured surface and molded it together into one large ball, which I then cut in 2. I rolled each half into a log about 13 inches long and transferred that to my baking sheet. To me, 2 inches sounded too narrow for biscotti, so I made mine about 3 inches wide by flattening my logs and forming each into a loaf that resembled biscotti I've seen before before putting the pan in the oven.

My loaves cracked along the top after being in the oven for less than half their baking time. Again, having never made biscotti before, I'm unsure if this was because there was something off about my dough, but that seemed the most logical explanation to me. (Namely, that my dough is too dry. Next time, I won't use the entire flour mixture to see if that helps.) Still, I baked it the full 35 minutes, taking the pan out when the loaves were golden brown.

After cooling the loaves for 10 minutes, I transferred them to a cutting board, as instructed, but I made my slices a bit thicker than 1/2 inch since, as expected, my loaves remained very narrow and cutting the slices this thin seemed like it would yield rather anemic pieces of biscotti. As a result, I baked my slices closer to 20 minutes since they did not crisp in the recommended 15 minutes.

Overall, I'd say my first attempt at biscotti was a mild success. They taste good, but they don't look like the ones you buy from bakeries, grocery stores, or Starbucks. I believe part of my somewhat messy presentation is the chocolate chips; since they are not completely cooled when the loaves are sliced, melted chocolate is swiped across the biscotti, so it looks less like chocolate chip and more like...chocolate swirl. Also, the biscotti loaves were rather small, so I think that using miniature chips or bigger loaves may be advisable for future batches. I plan to try both, and I'll let you know what I find.


UPDATE: So apparently baking my biscotti slices for extra time was a non-ideal plan. I didn't read the side note about these being softer biscotti until after they were finished (and almost missed it completely because of the way it was presented in the book), which is why I gave it to you guys up front. My biscotti are edible and taste good, but they definitely need to be dunked in coffee or tea to soften them up a bit, more like traditional biscotti. So if you try this recipe, stick to baking the slices for 15 minutes.