biscotti care package!

For months I've been promising one of my friends I'd send her homemade biscotti. Somehow I got really into making it in the last year, and it keeps really well so I've given it as gifts a few times. I'm not sure what it is about biscotti, but it's SUCH a good accompaniment to tea and coffee. There's a reason this stuff exists.

I ended up putting together a box with some other things to remind her of home--she goes to a very tiny school in a small town in Wisconsin and often misses living here. City kid at heart, that one!

Sugar, flours (AP and WW pastry), baking powder, eggs, butter

I've used Bittman's basic recipe in the past (I have the page number memorized because I've used it so many times... 716 in the softcover) and it's very good, but I like my add-ins so I always tinker with things like spices, nuts and fruit. This time I made two different kinds, one new and one I've done before--and I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Lemon-almond, my standard:

Lemon, almonds, almond extract

And I decided to try chai spice with a vanilla bean glaze:

Chai spice blend, vanilla bean, powdered sugar, milk (also vanilla extract... oops)

I mixed up all the plain dough first, then divided it in half to add the flavorings.

ZESTED

I don't use any juice in the lemon-almond biscotti, just the zest. I love lemon zest. I want it in everything.

Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves,  cardamom, black pepper

I looked up a recipe (thanks Google!) and mixed up my own chai spice blend since I already have all those spices on my shelf. And I made about four times as much as I needed, so I now have chai-flavored goodness on hand for whenever I need it next!

What makes biscotti is the fact that it's baked twice--you make a log of dough and put it in the oven until it's almost done, take it out, slice it, and the pop the slices back in to brown them. That way you get that dry, crunchy texture that's not all that appealing by itself, but becomes magical and melty when you dip it in your coffee (or tea or hot chocolate or what have you).

Cooling!

After cutting those into slices and putting them back in the oven, I mixed up the vanilla bean glaze. To get the seeds out you have to slice a bean open lengthwise and scrape out the insides.

I credit my coworker with teaching me how to do this. Thanks to her, I have fallen in love with vanilla beans. They're pretty expensive so I use them sparingly, but in the right places the clean vanilla flavor and little bean flecks are too perfect to pass up.

Once the slices were out and cooled, I glazed the chai spice ones, let it set up and bagged them.

Fresh out the oven

Half of them are in the box to go in the mail tomorrow! Not sure where the rest will end up (my stomach? Of course not, I don't know what you're talking about...).