Common to holiday giving is the cookie tin. These gifts are wonderful but, frankly, my pantry is overrun by treats and cookies during the holiday season.
Most traditional cookies don't have a long shelf life. In my house, it is like a marathon to eat all the cookies before they go stale, I end up skipping meals in lieu of the calories I consume with holiday sweets.
Because these lovely gifts are so personal, I feel bad not eating them. And of the cookies I give, I am sure it is the same story.
One cookie, however, stays a favorite for more than the fact that I don't have to eat them right away.
It's the Italian biscotti.
They're flavorful, you can dip them in coffee or milk and they don't break, they accommodate a variety of ingredients and flavors and they can last up to two weeks because of low moisture in the twice-baked biscuit. So even after the New Year, you can still have some to snack on and not have a stale cookie.
According to www.whatscookingamerica.net, the biscotti, ("bis," meaning twice and "cotto," meaning cooked) derives from the hard biscuit that was so common to sea travelers, called hard tack. Twice-baking took most of the moisture from the biscuit and made it resistant to mold. Thankfully, the Italians refined the process and added flavor and ingredients to make the end result more palatable than hard tack.
Biscotti is surprisingly easy to make and has so many options for ingredients that there are unlimited ways it can be flavored.
The trickiest parts of making them are the mixing and the shaping and baking. Just like biscuits, you can't overmix the dough. I found that if the dough is mixed too much, the biscotti becomes dense and heavy. The phrase, mix until just combined is really important in mixing the dough. The first time I made cranberry biscotti, I used a hand mixer to mix it and they were tooth breakers. A glass of milk was necessary to eat them.
The second important tip to making your biscotti is the shaping. Shaping them is relatively easy, but the measurement has to be accurate. Too wide and the dough won't cook properly, too short and they end up being too tall. I use a ruler to make sure my logs of dough are 10 inches by 2.5 inches on the parchment before I bake them. Resist flouring your hands to shape the sticky dough. The dough will be dense if you add too much flour, even on the outside. As a side note, I prefer cooling the dough in the refrigerator before shaping to make it easier to handle. In fact, separate the dough in half before refrigerating to prevent handling it too much. The butter in the dough will warm quickly with the warmth of your hand.
I have two ovens in my house, a GE Monogram that I use for baking because it retains the moisture more than my big Thermador Professional that can produce crisp fries and bread. I thought the Thermador would be perfect for the biscotti but, in fact, the cookies baked crisp too fast. In a conventional oven, just make sure you keep an eye on the logs and sliced cookies to keep them from over-browning. They can go from crisp to brick hard fast.
Our favorite recipe is a chocolate chip, coconut and almond version that tastes wonderfully like an Almond Joy. It is such a great flavor and the coconut and toasted almonds are a perfect complement to the hard cookie.
The cranberry biscotti was really nice with white chocolate drizzled on top, but make sure you get a good quality chocolate; the chips don't really melt well enough to drizzle.
The basic dough recipe can be the canvas to your creations. Add lemon zest, anise and vanilla for a traditional flavor. Two tablespoons of orange zest and almond and vanilla extract will make a flavor-packed biscotti with wonderful citrus flavors. Mix in spices such as black pepper, ground cloves, cinnamon and ground ginger and then add vanilla extract for a special spiced version. Nuts or dark chocolate bits also can be added.
We will always bake toffee bars, sugar cookies and spritz cookies at Christmas time. But for cookies to give, biscotti is my go-to; with a bag of really nice coffee, these cookies make a great gift. And anything I can eat with coffee to justify another cup gets extra points in my book.
Lisa Waas' passion for all things culinary fuels her writing. She lives in Fernandina Beach and uses her friends and family as her culinary guinea pigs. You can reach her on Facebook as The Inquisitive Cook or at lisaphr@bellsouth.net.
