My husband and I love the Great British Baking Show (aka the Great British Bake Off in the UK). It's a baking competition that features "real people" in the UK who arrive to a tent weekly to take on a new challenge – from bread to patisserie to cake. During the latest season to air in the US, one episode featured the contestants making their own versions of biscotti, a hard, twice-baked Italian biscuit.
I haven't been that exposed to biscotti in the past because of my nut allergy, but the contestants nut and nut-free versions of biscotti inspired me to try my hand at this treat. I have since made two batches of biscotti, which are the perfect gift as they last up to one month (!) in an air-tight container. I can't believe how easy it is to make this simple cookie, and I know it's going to become a staple in my kitchen.
For my first biscotti attempts, I followed the Cook's Illustrated Honey Lavender Biscotti recipe. I omitted the optional lavender though because I didn't have any on hand and also ended up using around 1 tablespoon of minced orange zest because that is all one large orange would yield me.
The recipe was surprisingly easy to construct, with only three initial challenges.
You first whisk most of the wet ingredients together in a large bowl.
Then add in the lovely smelling grated zest.
Then fold in the dry ingredients until just mixed.
This is where tricky part #1 comes in. This dough is STICKY and very hard to shape. So when Cook's Illustrated tells you to flour your hands, really flour your hands to shape the dough into logs – the flour makes all the difference.
Challenge #2 emerged while trying to figure out if the biscotti logs were baked enough. The recipe says to bake until the loaves are "golden and just beginning to crack on top." With no big cracks appearing, I decided mini-cracks / holes on a much darker loaf seemed ok?
Then the recipe eased up as I just needed to cut the loafs into equally-sized cookies!
And here is where challenge #3 emerged. The recipe said to place the cut cookies back on "the cookie sheet" but I had way too many cookies to put on the baking sheet, with equal spacing between them. So I initially did this:
After putting the cookies back into the oven like this, I realized this cannot be right. So I got another cookie sheet out, lined it with parchment and then placed half the cookies on that sheet. This yielded cookies that actually crisped up during the second bake, though I will note that the cookies will dry out further after cooling, so don't feel that they need to have the signature "crack" out of the oven. They will develop it after approx. 5 minutes of cooling.
These biscotti had a lovely, soft sweet flavor from the honey and a bit of light citrus from the orange zest. They are a perfect tea-time treat, and even a week after I made them, still tasted fantastic. I really can't wait to make these again and again!
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