TWD #9: Hazelnut Biscotti

We're very particular about biscotti in our house. We both like it, but not if it's super dry. I just think that biting into a cookie shouldn't hurt your mouth. That's why my standard recipe has butter. Fat = softer cookie. So on one hand I was happy to have such an easy recipe for this week's TWD post, but not overly excited, as I knew Jake and I likely wouldn't be eating much of it.

I took this opportunity to play around with the recipe a little bit for a couple of different reasons. First I split the recipe in half and decided to do half hazelnut and half almond, mainly because I just prefer almonds to hazelnuts. A tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder gave the hazelnut biscotti a nice chocolatey flavor but the final product wasn't quite sweet enough for my taste.

The other change I made was to use orange juice instead of liquor in both batches. Here's the thing: ever since we got back from Spain I can't tolerate liquor. Those chupitos really did a number on me, and even the smell of hard liquor turns my stomach, so orange juice seemed like a good substitute.

Oh the almond version...The theory was that I could substitute almond meal for the flour evenly. It did not work. The dough was a bit wet when I put it in the oven, but I've had wet doughs turn into beautiful creations before so I let it play out. Thinking back, those weren't free-form baked goods so I probably should have known better. The result looked and tasted like a sticky version of Dorie's Gluten Free Almond Baby Cakes, which was tasty, but what it wasn't, was biscotti.

So basically I ended up with chocolate hazelnut biscotti and gluten-free almond something that did not resemble biscotti in the least when it came out of the oven. I glazed a few of the chocolate hazelnut pieces with orange sugar, hoping to make them a bit more appealing for me but sadly, to no avail. Looks like I'll be sticking to my favorite biscotti recipe for the forseeable future, but if you prefer your biscotti a bit on the dry side, be sure to check out this super easy recipe on the website of this week's host,s Jodi of Homemade and Wholesome and Katrina of Baking and Boys.

 

An Exploration of Biscotti

For the last Tuesdays with Dorie - Baking With Julia challenge (Chocolate Truffle Tartlets) one of the ingredients for the filling was biscotti, and like so many of the other Doristas, I chose to make my own. But being me, I didn't stop at one biscotti recipe. I started with 2 and ended up with 4. And of course, still being me--because who else would I be?--I've now made a total of 8 different biscotti varieties over the last 12 days.

Citrus almond. Four-chocolate. Cinnamon espresso. Espresso hazelnut. Cherry lime. Strawberry lemon. Gluten-free four-chocolate. Savory pine-nut & sunflower seed.

As I've mentioned before, I tend to make mini versions or smaller batches when testing out new recipes, but that's still a lot of biscotti. The cinnamon-espresso, cherry-lime and strawberry-lemon were a bit heavy. I found the espresso with hazelnuts and chocolate chips missing something, but not so lacking that I didn't eat the entire batch anyway.