Today ended up being a cooking and baking day. I made vegetarian sausage, tomato sauce (I noticed in some of my pictures, my wooden spoon with tomato sauce on it is there) and meatballs, bread and some beautiful biscotti. I also sauteed some onions and made a pizza crust for a pissaladiere which is a fancy french word for an onion, cheese and black olive topped pizza. I decided since the biscotti was the most beautiful I would share that recipe. The recipe is King Arthur Flour's Cherry Pistachio Biscotti.
I didn't have dried cherries, but, I did have cranraisins, so I decided to use those in place of the dried cherries. Any dried fruit would work well.Start with 1 cup dried cranraisins and 1 cup of pistachios. It turns out approximately 9 oz of pistachios with their shells on is about 1 cup shelled pistachios. I coarsely chopped them up and set the mixture aside for later.
Preheat the oven to 350. Line or grease a baking sheet.
In the mixing bowl I added:
6 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Beat until it's smooth and creamy and then add 2 eggs and beat again. It looks kind of yucky at this point, but, don't despair everything will be alright.
Add the cranraisins and pistachios and stir until they are distributed through the dough.
Divide the dough in half, form into 2 loaves and put side by side on the baking sheet which has been lined. I used a silpat, but, parchment paper works well too. Shape the loaves to approx. 10 1/2" long and 2" wide rectangle.
Bake for 25 minutes
Remove them from the oven. Turn the oven down to 325. Spray them lightly with water. I didn't have a clean spray bottle handy so I lightly brushed the loaves with water using a pastry brush. The water helps keep the dough a little soft which helps keep it from crumbling when you cut it.
After 5 minutes out of the oven, cut the loaves into approx. 1/2" pieces. The water trick worked a little, but, mine still crumbled a bit. I used a serrated knife to cut the loaves.
Back to the oven for their 2nd bake.
According to the recipe, they should bake the 2nd time for 35 - 40 minutes. I found 30 minutes to be plenty of time maybe even a minute or two too long. The biscotti should be dry but the center might be a teeny bit moist. They should be golden.
Even though it looks like I might have already taken a bit, I didn't (yet). They did crumble a bit when I cut them before the 2nd bake.
I ate one while writing this post and they are delicious. Stored in an airtight container they should last a long time - we'll see.
