Dried Fruit and Pistachio Biscotti

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 sugar

1/4 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 2 cups of flour and stir until well combined

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.