Quick Easy Biscotti Recipe

I have the sweetest mother-in-law. Since I can remember she's always baked biscotti. She loves to feed them to me and to be honest I could quite frankly eat them all day long. Imagine Homer Simpson and his drooling face - that's me. She always sends me away with a goodie bag of them! Bless her.

If you don't know what biscotti are, they are a kind of 'biscuit' which can also be known as cantuccini, that originate from Italy. Biscotti are usually twice baked making them quite a hard biscuit. I personally don't always bake them twice usually, because I'm too impatient and want them NOW! You can make biscotti how ever you like, just keep the main ingredients the same - I'll highlight the main ones with a *.

I like to double up my recipe to make a shed load of biscuits and if you make too many you can actually freeze them. Winner. Right, let's crack on. Before you get started turn on your oven to gas mark 3 or 180℃ fan.

First, all you need to throw into a large bowl are the dry ingredients which are;
225g/8 oz - Plain flour*
150g/5 oz - Caster sugar*
1/2 teaspoon - Baking powder*
Pinch of Salt*

Once these are combined and mixed together, pop in...
75g/3 oz - Nuts of your choice (pecans, pistachio and almonds work well)
50g/2 oz - Candied peel (I do a mixture of candied peel and glacé cherries)

Now you need to add the wet ingredients. Just make a well in the middle of the mixture.
3 medium eggs* (2 whole eggs and one yolk)
1 teaspoon - Vanilla extract

Mix everything together with a wooden spoon. When you're happy pop the dough on to a oven tray covered in grease proof paper - shape it like a log. Make sure they are reasonably big trays, as the mixture will spread once it heats up.

Set your timer for 45 minutes and go and make yourself busy until the buzzer goes off. When the buzzer on the oven does ring, bring out the tray and check the biscotti are a golden brown. Leaving it on the tray, take a big sharp knife and cut them into slices. Lay them out on the tray and you can then if you wish after cutting them up - put them back in to the oven for 5 to 10 minutes to twice bake them. This will harden the inside of biscuit. You can leave them to cool on the oven tray or pop them on a wire cooling rack.

Like I said above, you can switch up ingredients in the recipe. You can add extras like fennel seeds, orange or lemon zest/juice, you can dribble dark chocolate on them or half dip them in it too. If you don't want to use caster sugar, coconut is a excellent substitute.

I will say at the time I was baking these I did plan to pop pecans in the mixture however, but it turns out they were mouldy. Rather than poison myself I decided to go without and add extra candied peel instead. Problem solved. Et voilà.

Now, if biscotti doesn't sound like something you'd be into, (cannot see why) then why not try these short bread biscuits or banana oat cookies which I have made previously.

Enjoy.

Angela x