I am a big fan of almonds. I really love almond, citrus, and passion fruit, and often choose desserts with those flavors over chocolate if I’m eating out. Blasphemous, I know, but I’m trying to keep it honest here. Much to my delight, these biscotti knock it out of the park!
Gretchen of Canela & Comino chose, Lenox Almond Biscotti on page 141-143 of Dorie’s book (or you can check out Gretchen’s delightful website, as well). I was mightily relieved to have an easy recipe to pull together; it seems like the past few months, my life has been a busy blur, and this week was no exception.
Biscotti are wonderfully easy to bake – you just form the loaf, bake, cool, slice, and bake again. None of the in-and-out of the oven routine that you have to go through with drop cookies. I used Kerrygold butter, and refrigerated the dough logs before baking them to minimize spreading, which a lot of other folks complained about. Then I sliced the logs on an angle to create longer biscotti. This recipe included some cornmeal, which I couldn’t taste but which gave the cookies a delightful crunch. The almond flavor was perfect: strong, but not overwhelming. These join my list of favorite Dorie recipes, and I see myself making them again, maybe dipped in a bit of chocolate. Hey, I didn’t say I don’t like chocolate – I love it, it’s just that I often prefer a few other flavors over it. And a little chocolate with these would be awesome!
Baking Tip: Cornmeal is highly perishable, and you should store it in the freezer or it will go rancid very quickly. Before you bake with it, always give it a sniff test: it should smell “corny,” but not sour or rancid. If it smells bad, toss it, because it will make the entire baked good taste pretty nasty.
To see how everyone else faired with the biscotti, head on over to TWD to see the blogroll. Next week: Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp has chosen Pumpkin Muffins.