Italian Spice Biscotti
I’m always ready for another biscotti recipe to add to my collection—how about you?
This Italian spice biscotti is new to the blog, but I’ve been making these biscotti for almost 40 years now. Way back when, a work colleague brought in some of these delicious biscotti to share. I, of course, asked her for the recipe.
If you’re familiar with biscotti, you know that they are almost always twice baked to make them nice and crispy for dunking in coffee. It’s a tried and true technique, and my recipe below is no exception. After you make the dough, you form logs, bake them, cut them, and rebake them. Having said that, the original recipe as I received it did not include the second baking step. I added it myself as I prefer my biscotti to be crunchy.
When I first sampled the biscotti from my co-worker, they were somewhat soft and chewy. Now, I really liked and enjoyed the biscotti well enough to ask for the recipe. I am telling you this just in case you want to skip the second baking step which crisps them up. The biscotti are quite delicious either way—enjoy!
Italian Spice Biscotti
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. cloves
- 3 tsp. cinnamon
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 tbl. orange juice
- 1 tsp. grated orange rind
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup almonds, roughly chopped
- 1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
- 1 egg, beaten, for brushing on tops of cookie logs, optional
Directions
Preheat oven to 350o F.
Place parchment paper on two cookie sheets and set aside.
Whisk flour, baking powder, cloves, and cinnamon in bowl and set aside.
In a mixing bowl, beat eggs with sugar until combined. Add orange juice and orange rind; mix to incorporate. Add dry ingredients, alternating with oil. Fold in nuts.
Refrigerate dough for at least 4 hours or overnight until firm enough to handle by hand. Sprinkle counter or large cutting board with flour and place dough on it. Get a little flour on your hands and shape dough into four logs, approximately 8” x 2”.
Place two logs on each of the two prepared cookie sheets. Brush tops of logs with beaten egg.
Bake at 350o F for 25 to 30 minutes. I always bake mine for a full 30 minutes as I like them to be very crispy after the final baking.
Let biscotti cool for about 10 minutes, then slice diagonally into to 3/4″ slices.
Lower oven to 300o F and bake for an additional 15 minutes. Once, they’re cool, put on a pot of coffee!
Fran’s Notes
I didn’t do it this time, but I think a drizzle of melted white chocolate would put these biscotti over the top.
Source: Recipe from a former work colleague