Chocolate Peanut Butter Biscotti

I am strangely lazy when it comes to twice-baked goods. Give me fiddly little dough shapes to make, or chocolate dipped whathaveyou, and I'm happy to work away at it for a couple of unreasonably focused hours. But biscotti and shortbread both require a discomfiting combination of sporadic attention and accurate timing.



This biscotti isn't particularly traditional--I used both baking powder and soda, and the recipe doesn't have any ground nuts in it. What it does have is a deep chocolate flavor. (You can taste the peanut butter on the inhale of a bite, but it's not overpowering) And, importantly, this recipe withstood my haphazard baking rhythm.



Chocolate Peanut Butter Biscotti

Ingredients:
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup chocolate peanut butter (or nutella, or regular peanut butter)
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Beat eggs until frothy. Add sugar. Add peanut butter in by hand mixing. Combine (sift together) flour, baking soda and powder and salt. Mix. Add chocolate chips.


Form the dough into two or three logs, and place them on a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, then pull the sheet from the oven, and reduce the temperature to 200. Using a serrated knife, slice the logs into biscotti shaped pieces. This may be difficult. I got through it by pretending I was a jigsaw machine. Lay each piece on its side.

Bake again (at 300 now) for 10-15 minutes. Stay on the short end of the baking time on this and the next step to create biscotti that retains a softer center.

Pull the sheet from the oven, flip all the pieces and bake again for 10-15 minutes.

Done. These are best enjoyed with a hot beverage and a long dunk.

Simple Italian Cookies

I narrowly missed getting doored by two flower delivery vans on the way in to work this morning, so it must be valentine's day. In honor of the occasion, I pulled together a batch of simple italian cookies--sometimes called Italian Love Knots.

I usually refer to these as cookie-biscuits. The dough isn't very sweet, and the cookies are firm a little dry. They get their sweetness from a citrus glaze that dries to a hard finish. I've made the glaze with lemon juice and orange zest in the past, and that's what I recommend, but I went with orange juice for this glaze. When you include the zest, it'll be visible in the glaze.

Simple Italian Cookies

1/4 cup butter (salted), softened

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp orange extract

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg white

1 1/2 cups flour (all-purpose)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Glaze:

Lemon Juice

Powdered Sugar

the zest of one orange

Directions:

Preheat the Oven to 350 Degrees F.

Mix the butter, sugar and extracts. Add in the egg and egg white. In another bowl (or your measuring cup) mix the flour and baking powder. Add the dry to wet, and mix until the dough comes together--it'll look crumbly, but it'll come together in the next step.

Pick up shooter marble sized pieces of dough and roll them between your palms until you have a long snake of dough. Knot the dough in any manner you please (suggestions include: pretzel, knot, heart, spiral) and place on a lined baking sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. The top will be light, and the bottom will be slightly browned.

For the Glaze- Start out with two cups of powdered sugar, and add lemon juice by the teaspoon, mixing thoroughly after each addition, until you get a runny glaze. Add orange zest and mix. Wait for the cookies to cool before dipping them if you want a thicker glaze layer. If you're fine with a thin layer, dip while hot.