Double Chocolate-Almond Biscotti

While Lindsie was in town, we actually baked together! I think she wanted to show she can care about baking. We have not had success in the past.

When I was in SF a few weeks ago, I bought this marvelous book from Ghirardelli Square.
So naturally we picked a recipe from here. Page 46 has the 'Double Chocolate-Hazelnut Biscotti' recipe. Since we do not have hazelnut on hand, we went with almonds.

Double Chocolate-Almond Biscotti

Should make 48 cookies, but we cut ours a little bigger.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Chocolate and Cocoa
4 ounces Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate baking bar, finely chopped (We used semi-sweet chocolate chips chopped because that's what we have on hand)
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup almonds, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets.
   
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, ground chocolate and semisweet chocolate.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs and vanilla, and stir until well-blended. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until a dough forms (it should adhere to the beaters), 2 to 3 minutes. Fold in the nuts. It is a sticky batter.
4. Divide the dough into 2 equal parts. On the prepared cookie sheets, using lightly floured hands, shape each portion into 1 1/4-inch-by-12-inch logs.
5. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the logs are firm to the touch. Let cool on the cookie sheets for 15 minutes or until cool enough to handle.
   
6. Lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees.
7. Transfer 1 log to a cutting board and with a serrated knife, cut in half, and then into twelve 1-inch-wide cookies. Repeat with the remaining log.
8. Return cookies to baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until crisp.
   
9. Transfer the cookies from the sheet to a wire cooling rack and let cool completely. Store at room temperature in a tightly covered container. This step is very important because the cookies will not stay crisp for too long if left out or not tightly covered.

I had a few with my herbal tea and it was great! They still had a crunch after dipping but not completely hard to chip a tooth.

Another year has passed

Julie left this earth 2 years ago today. To remember her, Greg and I made black olive pizza from scratch. Turned out pretty good.

Here is the link to the pizza dough recipe. I made a small change to the dough this time. I added 4 cloves of minced garlic to the double batch. (2 cloves if you are only making one pizza.) It wasn't overpowering and was a nice addition to the Italian seasonings. We made the sauce from a can of diced tomatoes, garlic, onion and a few seasonings. We cooked it down and then smashed it a little with a potato masher. Sometimes less is more and in pizza, that couldn't be a better motto.

Stay tuned to see what we do next time to change up the pizza a little bit. :-)