One of my tricks to making these chocolate biscotti: use one of those electric knives to do the slicing. We use this Cuisinart electric knife (available on Amazon) that we got my dad one year for Christmas. We got him this electric knife to help him carve our Sunday roasts, but actually, we were also secretly gifting it to him so that we could make biscotti with ease. Gotta love Christmas: that time of year when you buy somebody a gift so that you can borrow it days later.
This recipe from Ricardo's Cookie edition is great, except I am omitting the candied peel in the write-up. The peel just doesn't work here. It becomes rock hard from the twice baking, and it can burn easily if you aren't careful. Unpleasant. Don't worry if a couple of the biscotti crack a little as you slice them. Even broken biscotti are a treat! Come to think of it, there's a bakery in Toronto that sells "biscotti ends" and all the little broken bits. See, you could start a business selling broken cookies, so don't worry... If you love biscotti, be sure to try the chai biscotti too!
Chocolate biscotti
Ingredients
- 125 grams all-purpose flour 1 cup
- 100 grams granulated sugar ½ cup
- 27 grams Cacao Barry extra brute cocoa powder 3 tbsp
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 pinch Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
- 115 grams unsalted butter ½ cup, cold and cut into small pieces
- 1 large egg
- 3 tbsp whole milk (3.25 % fat)
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- ¼ cup shelled unsalted pistachios chopped
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment (stick to a lighter coloured cookie sheet to avoid overbaking/burning the biscotti).
- In a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Then drop in the butter chunks and pulse to form a coarse meal texture. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla, and pulse again a few times.
- Transfer the dough to a bowl to work in the pistachios by hand (if you do this in the food processor, you risk grinding the nuts too much).
- Pat the dough into a flattened roll with well floured hands (dough is sticky!) and form it into a loaf about 12 inches long on the parchment-lined sheet.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
- Let the roll cool for 10 minutes, then using an electric carving knife (like <a href="http://amzn.to/1LZwb6Z" rel="nofollow" target="blank">this one from Cuisinart available on Amazon</a>), cut the roll into ¾-inch thick biscotti.
- Transfer the cookies to the baking sheet, and bake them again for 20–25 minutes. Watch them because you don't want them to burn.
- Let cool on a wire rack before eating.
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