Christmas Biscotti
The perfect biscuit for pretending you have your shit together
Hello it’s me again! Two posts in. one week! What is going on??
I’ll tell you what’s going on: I have decided to substantially lower my standards on all fronts. You want coherent, well-formed insights on cooking and/or gardening? You want pithy observations or articles so full of depth and meaning that they make you go ‘Hmm, well now! How bout that!’. Yeah? Well, come back in ten years.
The old Casey will meet you there and we can share tequila slammers, skull a couple cans of red bull and dance all night to Foundations/I want you back/My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard/pick your poison I’ll be there. Or maybe I won’t?? The ongoing mystery of where I’ve gone and when I’ll be back is half the fun!
Either way here is another recipe for you - in time for Christmas no less! I can scarcely believe it myself.
This recipe is just as easy as my last one, but with the added bonus that if someone hasn’t made biscotti before they have no idea how easy it is. I made the first half of this recipe with both of my kids while my husband was out of the house and it worked!! I know that’s something that homesteading homeschooling Tradwives do every day with about ten times as many kids, but for me it was a big deal and proves how manageable biscotti are! No one will know, though. They will think you are amazing and have your whole life sorted out.
We even put some of these biscotti in little bags, tied them with ribbons and delivered them to our favourite neighbours and I felt like such a sickeningly delightful secret fraudster. They don’t know that there’s a three day old half-chewed apple in the playroom, a Christmas countdown set resolutely to ‘8 days’ or an empty, broken plastic perch that used to hold a red bird and now just sings tinny, disembodied Christmas tunes in the kitchen whenever the noise-activated switch gets flipped (which is EVERY DAY ALL. THE. TIME). I tried playing Michael Buble’s Christmas album while we baked, but had to switch him off once the mixmaster went on and the disembodied bird started singing and my brain glitched back into that vaguely disconnected otherworldly plane that it visits whenever there are multiple discordant sounds playing at fever pitch.
Anyway, the recipe!
Christmas Biscotti
Makes likeeeeee 40?? Depends how thin you slice ‘em
Ingredients
5 egg whites
1 cup castor sugar
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups nuts of your choosing
Handfuls of optional extras (see notes)
Method
Whisk egg whites until very stiff.
Add sugar gradually.
Fold in flour and salt (at this point you can add about 1tsp of vanilla essence/almond essence etc). Fold gently until the flour is fully incorporated, then add the nuts.
Add any kind of nuts you like. Pistachios are traditional but you could also add almonds, hazelnuts - whatever. Experiment! You can also chuck in chocolate pieces and dried fruits.
Spoon mixture onto a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper in two ‘logs’ . Bake at 150C for 50 minutes.
Let cool for 5 minutes then thinly slice (I found a bread knife works well for this). *Don’t stress if you have to take a break at this point, they can fully cool before slicing and it won’t affect the end result.
Lay slices on baking trays lined with baking paper and bake at 140C for 25 mins or until lightly golden. Let cool then store in an airtight container.
Notes
If you’d like to copy the biscotti recipes in the pictures, here they are:
Dark chocolate, hazelnuts and orange: to the base recipe, add the rind of two oranges (I grated mine on the second-finest setting, not the finest - recommend because it means you can see the rind and it looks pretty. I used one block of Lindt dark chocolate, broken into little pieces, and 1 1/2 cups of hazelnuts, plus a squeeze of orange juice (maybe 1/2 Tbsp or so)
Pistachio, cherry and almond: to the base recipe, add 1/2 Tbsp almond essence, 1 cup pistachios, 1/2 cup almonds (I used skin-on, they don’t need to be blanched), about 1 cup glace cherries, about 6 dried apricots and the grated rind of 1 lemon.
Thank you. I’ve always wanted to be a non trad wife biscuit baker
Hi Casey, these look lovely & easy enough for me to make.. just a question, do you use almond flakes? O/w how do you cut through them? (Guess pistachio soft enough to.. but even with a bread knife?)
And re the version with cherries, would real ones be ok (as nicer taste) or too soft for the crunchy end result?