Biscotti, that crunchy Italian cookie bread, sounds hard to make and complicated. The double baking makes it one of those recipes you drool over but never actually try yourself. However, a good biscotti recipe is well worth the trouble of baking it twice and the truth is, its really not that difficult!
There are any number of variations on the basic vanilla biscotti recipe. You can easily turn out chocolate, lemon, strawberry or even blueberry ones. If youre nervous about doing this, then its a good idea to follow a proper recipe the first few times until youre comfortable with experimenting.
The great thing about biscotti is that you can add things to it. Why stick to just a plain old cookie when you can incorporate chocolate chips, dried fruits and nuts? These all add flavor and a delightful texture to the regular recipe. You can add any of these to just about any recipe without worrying about it ruining the dough.
Its also possible to use a glaze after the cookies have been baked and cooled. Dip them in white or dark chocolate, then sprinkles, chocolate crumbs or chopped nuts. Or you can use a special icing glaze with lemon or almond flavoring. The sky is the limit when it comes to flavors and decorations!
Using Your Biscotti Recipe
What can you do with all these lovely baked goods once youve finished? One biscotti recipe usually turns out at least two dozen beautifully toasted cookies. They do keep for quite some time when in an airtight container, but you will also find that they are perfect for gift giving.
People love to receive a nice bag of various flavors of biscotti. I recommend doing a chocolate batch, a lemon or lime one and an almond batch, as well. These three flavors are perfect in a gift basket with a box of tea to make and dip the cookies into.
Once you find a good biscotti recipe and are used to the twice baked schedule, its really very simple to find variations of the recipe and turn out some pretty cool experiments of your own. Look for a recipe that has a photo so you can see exactly how it should turn out. There should be clear instructions, as well, that you can understand easily. Be sure to read through the recipe ahead of time! This will help immensely since you don t want to get halfway through and realize you dont know what you want. Biscotti is well worth the effort and its far easier than you would ever imagine.
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