Holiday Biscotti

justcallmetoni's Note:

While the day following Thanksgiving is a major shopping day for many, in my family it represents the start of our annual cookie baking. I was looking for a cookie, preferably a biscotti to use some extra almond flour and could not find one. A little tinkering with one of my favorite basic biscotti recipes and a new holiday cookie was born. These are large biscotti, perfectly sized for dunking.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 10 mins
• Prep Time: 30 mins
• Cook Time: 40 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 38

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided
• 1/2 almond flour
• 1/2 cup whole almond, coarsely cut into 2-3 pieces
• 1/4 candied orange peel
• 1/2-2/3 cup mixed candied fruit

Wash

• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon water
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare baking sheet with a light coat of cooking spray.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar, baking soda, salt, eggs and extracts together.
3. Add in the almond flour and 2 cups of all purpose flour and mix with a large wooden spoon.
4. Begin stirring in the nuts and candied fruit. Sprinkle in the remain 1/4 cup of flour. At this point you will need to put the spoon down and knead by hand. Knead 8 or 9 times until the fruit and nuts are well distributed.
5. Divide the dough in half and shape into logs about 9-10 inches long. Be sure that your logs are of an even width from top to bottom. Place on baking sheet several inches apart and lightly flatten the top. (Note the width of the loaves will double in baking.).
6. In a small bowl, combine egg and water and blend. Using a pastry brush apply a light egg wash to the tops of each loaf.
7. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on rack for 8-10 minutes.
8. Take loaves and slice on diagonal making wedges 1/2 inch thick. Place slices on baking sheet cut sides up and bake for 3-5 minutes. Turn the cookies over and return to the oven and bake an additional 5-8 minutes. Cookies will be dry and crisp to the touch.
9. Place on rack and allow to cool completely before storing.
10. Note: For holiday trays you can also make smaller biscotti by dividing the dough into 3 loaves. Reduce initial baking time to 25 minutes. Use the lower ranges in the times given for the second baking. In thirds, my loaves were about 4 inches long, longer when cut on the diagonal.

Reviews

[twiggyshell]

This tasted great! I doubled the almond and vanilla extract, maybe even triples(I didnt bother to measure it out) and it tasted fantastic! It was great fresh and I sent off a batch to my mom whos on the other side of the country! I only had dried cranberries and no almond flour so i used regular flour and it was still great! Really great baking experience, very interesting cookie! EDIT::My mom got the package and she loved these the most out of everything i baked for her! her friend too!

[KLHquilts]

These are gorgeous! And yummy, too. They are going to be just perfect for Christmas gifts. I tweaked it just a bit; I ended up using walnuts instead of almonds, and so replaced the almond flour with regular flour. Doesn't seem to have hurt anything -- the texture is perfect, the flavors are great ... this is a real keeper. Thanks for posting this!