Easy Gourmet Biscotti Recipe

Before you start assembling ingredients for the biscotti, toast the nuts. They can be toasted a day or two before you bake the biscotti to cut down on time. Make sure they are cool before you use them.

I buy the nuts raw and toast them in my oven. I toast them at 350 dgrees for 6 to 10 minutes depending on the size of the nuts. I think they taste better and they are healthier than roasted nuts. Do not use salted nuts.

I like a tart fruit because it blends well with the sweetness of the dough. You only need to soak the fruit for a few minutes while you are mixing the rest of the dough.

To make the biscotti dough, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Once the butter sugar combination is very fluffy, beat in the eggs first. Then once mixed well, add the liqueur you have chosen and the vanilla extract. Mix the ingredients thoroughly.

Next add the dry ingredients--flour, baking powder and salt. These can be added at the same time. Mix them in until well blended. At this point, your dough will be difficult to mix and somewhat stiff unless you have used a lot of liquid. If you have, your dough will be sticky.

Once your dough is completely mixed, you can fold in the nuts, fruit and chocolate. The more you add, the harder the dough will be to mix, but that is okay because the biscotti will still come out okay. Remember, that when they bake the ingredients become more fluid.

You can bake right on your tray, but I like to line the baking pan with parchment paper. Parchment paper eliminates the need to butter the pan, and reduces the fat in the cookies. The biscotti will not stick to the parchment paper. You can reuse the parchment paper a couple of times until it becomes brown or brittle.

Make one or two loaves (in a baguette or hot dog shape) on the parchment paper. You can alter the size of the biscotti by the width of the loaves.

Biscotti are twice baked cookies. The first baking is in the loaf shape. Bake the loaves in a preheated 325 degree oven between 25 and 40 minutes. This will depend on your oven so watch the first couple of batches very carefully after 25 minutes.

Each loaf should be lightly browned when you take it out. Let the loaves cool for a minimum of 10 minutes. If the center is too hot when you slice the loaves, they will fall apart. If you have chocolate in the biscotti, cool for at least 15 minutes..

Once cool enough, slice the loaves crossways with a very sharp knife to create individual biscotti. I use a Santoku knife for this. If you slice on a diagonal the biscotti will be longer. Slicing straight across will make them shorter. You can determine the width as you slice also.

For the second baking, stand the biscotti up on their bottom edge (as if they were still in the loaf) with about a 1/4 inch between them. Bake them this second time at 325 degrees for 10 minutes. The longer you bake them the drier they will be. If 10 minutes isn't enough, bake them longer.