Our TWD treat of the week was Lenox Almond Biscotti, chosen by Gretchen of Canela & Comino , thanks Gretchen! This is just the kind of recipe I couldn't wait to try when I joined TWD, not specifically, but it is a recipe I probably would have never tried on my own. I love almonds and almond flavor, but am not a big biscotti person, maybe I'll have one at a cafe in a book store, along with my caramel cappuccino, if the flavor sounds intriguing, but they are not something I'd be chomping at the bit to make. I love soft baked goods, I'm not a big fan of crunchy, crunchy is for crackers, candy canes, bagel chips...and biscotti, so I don't make these at home. I toyed with the idea of changing around the flavors of this, so many neat ideas popped into my head, diced pear and blue cheese, cranberry pumpkin, mini chocolate chip drizzled with white chocolate...but in the end I wanted to try the recipe for what it was. Of course I did mess it up a little, I forgot the actual almonds! I even bought some Butter Toffee Glazed Almond Accents especially for this recipe, which I absolutely love for salads, but I forgot to add them in. Did I mention I had three kids in the kitchen wanting to help? Maybe that had something to do with my oversight. Oh-well. The pure almond extract really added plenty of almond flavor to these, yum :)
At first I was a little nervous, the dough was not nearly as formed as I thought it should be, but I went with Dorie's instructions to form the dough logs with fingers and a spatula and popped it in the oven not knowing what to expect.
After 15 minutes they were perfect little biscotti logs, waiting to be cut. I followed all of the cooling directions, 30 minutes on a cooling rack, carefully remove to cutting board, everything went really smoothly.
I cut the biscotti and the kids and I all had an 'end' -- oh, boy, was it delicious! At that point I told myself, "Andrea, just dry bake one log, the rest can be enjoyed as the softie biscotti they are," but I didn't.
I lined them all up back on the baking sheet, standing them up like a marching band (ahhh marching band, weren't those the days?)
Sorry, back to biscotti, anyway, they came out of the oven 15 minutes later, golden and firm, perfect biscotti.
Honestly though, I preferred them as softie biscotti. Oh-well. They are great with tea! This was a really nice surprise of a recipe, especially coming off of last weeks sounds-so-good-but-lacking-in-the-taste-and-texture-department that was Caramel Peanut Topped Brownie Cake. Thanks to this week's TWD lesson, I learned that now I do not have to skip all of the yummy sounding biscotti recipes I see in cookbooks and magazines, I can just do the first bake, and enjoy them softie. Oh, almost forgot to add, the husband didn't even care to try one, and the kids all loved them! I wish I had a picture of my three little sweeties, munching on biscotti, and enjoying every crunch. My fussy-teething-almost-toddler especially loved them :)