People! Hi! đ
First of all, let me just say, make tons because a bit more than half mysteriously disappears from the time they’ve entered the oven until they’re stored in a box. Second of all, that box, make sure it doesn’t have a false bottom and lid and sides and that it’s properly locked away, because the biscotti keep disappearing. It’s like how socks disappear in the washing, but on an extremely exaggerated rate. Extremely. Okay, so, warnings have been given. Beware.
Now, don’t be scared, the disappearing biscotti mystery aside, they are so freakishly easy to make, but looks and sounds like they aren’t. Which means that practically everyone gets massively impressed when you ask if they want some home-made biscottis, biscotties, biscottoes? Biscotti.
As it is Christmas season (YIPPIE!!! HURRAY!!! FINALLY!!! This should be no surprise to people who have caught a snippet of my ringtone the past 3 years(?), which still is an instrumental version of “sleigh bells”. I LOVE CHRISTMAS. And, just to let this parenthesis go on a bit more, let me just tell you that having a Christmas tune for a ring tone is extremely effective, because post-Christmas from when most sane people are sick of it until right about now, I do everything in my power to answer before people realize what tune it is, getting some undeserved looks and giggles if they do. But spread the joy, Christmas tunes are cozy and joyous. And if they smile, then just know that you put a smile on someone else’s face and that’s great!) Sorry, I do realize I’m actually sort of mid-sentence, there is a start somewhere before the beginning of the over-extended parenthesis. For both our sakes, I’m going to go ahead and restart this whole paragraph in the next one, let me just scroll up and see what it was. Okay.
As it is Christmas season, I made Saffron biscotti instead of normal ones. And, I’ve lost my train of thought, so I’m going to go ahead and start the recipe that you’ve by now started wondering if it would ever appear. You and me both.
Turn on the oven, 175 degrees. That’s step one. And since I always forget to take out the baking trays and line them with paper before I’ve got one hand covered in the dough and have to balance the bowl with the dough on my hip as I try to fix everything without the dough ending up on the floor, I’m going to tell you, do that now, take out trays, 2 of them, line them with baking paper. Phew. Potential disaster averted.
Melt 100g of butter in a pot. Measure up 1,5 dl caster sugar. Lightly crush 0,5g of saffron along with some of the sugar. My mom taught me to use sugar cubes when crushing saffron, when the cubes have turned into caster sugar the saffron is lightly crushed. Tadaa! Mix the saffron with the butter, pour into a bowl and let it cool.
Mix in 2 eggs and the rest of the sugar. Mix 5 dl of flour with 1 tsp of baking powder. Lightly chop 1,5 dl of almonds, and let me tell you, when a recipe tells me to lightly chop something, I take it very literally. I measure up the almonds pour them out on a chopping board, pick up a knife and chop until most of the almonds at least have some sort of trace of being touched by the knife, not necessarily cut, but grazed, and not all but most.
To the saffron mixture, add the almonds and the flour mixture. The dough is very soft and sticky. The original recipe will tell you to divide the dough into 4 pieces and roll them to the length of the baking trays. But most of the times, the dough have not been roll-able, a definite lack of roll-ability. So, I’ll tell you to sort of aim for a quarter of the dough, scrape it of your hand onto the lined tray and then squish/drag it out into the shape of the imagined roll and repeat until you have the 4 “rolls”.
Bake in the oven for about 15 min and then let them cool somewhat. While the oven cools down to 100 degrees, because you have now told it to do that and I have now told you to do that.
Cut each length into slices, if you do it somewhat diagonally like the traditional biscotti they turn out a bit longer, but there’s no need. At this stage, the ends tend to magically disappear, biscotti have no end bits, right? Put the sliced biscotti back on the lined tray with one of the cut surfaces facing upwards.
Dry in the oven for at least 1 hour, or until they are dry. During the drying process biscotti systematically disappears, some claim that it has to do with checking if they are dry yet, some claim that that never happened. At some point, flip them around so the other side is facing up. Let the oven door be slightly ajar. If you want to really dry them out you can leave them in the oven, turn it down to 30ish degrees, and leave them overnight with the door ajar. Drying them out properly will make them keep longer, but they never last long enough for that to be a problem.
That’s it. Store them in a paper bag or a tin so they don’t go soft.
Enjoy, or maybe you already have? đ
‘Til next time, have some delicious, easy to make, biscotti!
GardenBookCook 