by Rita of sammysgrammy


Italian Biscotti

5 room temperture eggs
3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup of sugar
1 tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 chopped walnuts, chopped dried cherries, and mini chocolate chips
zest of one orange

Method: Put all dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl (RESERVING 1/2 CUP OF THE FLOUR TO USE AS BENCH FLOUR). Use a whisk to thoroughly incorporate. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients, pushing dry ingredients towards the side of the bowl. Into the hole, break the eggs, add the oil and vanilla. With a fork, begin to break yolks, stir wet ingredients together while gradually pulling the dry ingredients into the mix and incorporating with the fork. Eventually, you'll have a ball of crumbly dough. Add the cherries and the nuts.

With hands floured with some of the bench flour, knead this dough while its still in the bowl. When it all comes together and is not crumbley any longer, knead it on the counter which you have covered with a couple tbs. of the bench flour. (At this point is when I add the chocolate chips by flattening out the dough a bit, dumping the chips onto it and carefully kneading/incorporating them into the dough). As you're kneading, the dough will absorb this bench flour. Keep kneading and adding bench flour to the counter until you have a nice round lump of un-sticky dough (just a couple minutes).


Cut this lump into four quarters. Set three aside and roll the forth one on your floured counter into a loaf about 12" long and 1 1/2" wide. Pick up both ends of the loaf and carefully remove it to a parchment or silpat lined cookie sheet. Repeat with remaing quarters. Put two loaves on each sheet. Bake in 375 degree pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until very lightly browned. Because there are two baking sheets, I switch the them halfway through the baking time so that they both cook evenly.

Let loaves cool for about ten minutes. Then very carefully remove from cookie sheet with a spatuala onto a cutting board. Slice into diagonal slices with a sharp knife. Put these slices back onto the same cookie sheet and toast them on both sides until they again are very light brown (about 10 minutes for side 1 and 5 minutes for side 2).


Final step: melt about 6 oz. of both white and regular chocolate in separate small bowls in the microwave, according to package directions. With the cookies still on the cookie sheets, drizzle (with a fork) first the regular chocolate, then the white, over the cookies. I leave the whole thing alone, at this point, for the cookies to totally cool and the chocolate to set up. I store them in a large plastic container. Yeild is about 50 cookies.

Notes:

Chocolate set up can be hastened by cooling (either in fridge or cool garage or porch)

The hole in the middle of the dry ingredients is the Italian method of incorporating eggs and flour. Also used to make fresh homemade pasta. The hole is called the "fontana".
"Fountain" in English. It looks very much like the tops of volcanic mountains in Italy with the "fontana" being where the mountain erupted.

The word "biscotti" means cooked twice in Italian. The same root word for "two" is used for the English words bicycle, bi polar, bi-ped, etc.

About adding the chips last to the dough: I do this because I don't like the chololate to melt and stain the dough.