Anise Biscotti
When I was a kid, I never had a homemade chocolate chip cookie until I learned how to make them myself in junior high. What I did have, though, were lots of Italian biscotti from the local bakery. Although they weren’t homemade, I loved them.
Fast forward to adulthood, and I make biscotti as soon as the last batch has run out. My favorite are anise biscotti, but all the others I make are a veryclosesecond! I already have an anise biscotti recipe which calls for both anise extract and anise seed here on my blog, but I had it in mind to try to duplicate a very basic anise biscotti that my mother used to buy at a local bakery. When my kids were younger, she used to visit with a big box of them; and my daughters loved them.
Another reason for coming up with an anise biscotti without anise seeds is that I thought my 1-year-old granddaughter would like them that way. Well, mission accomplished—I tweaked a recipe and came up with this very basic, but very delicious plain anise biscotti.
Now, I’m the grandmother who visits and brings a Tupperware filled with these biscotti. My daughter says all she has to do is try to eat one and my granddaughter makes a bee line for her share. Biscotti are definitely in her DNA!
Anise Biscotti
Ingredients
- Approx. 7 cups flour
- 6 tsp. (2 tbl.) baking powder
- 1 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 cup (2 sticks butter)
- 2 cups sugar
- Whole bottle (one fluid ounce) of anise extract
- 6 eggs
Directions
Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl and set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add dry ingredients to mixture gradually until dough has a firm consistency and is stiff enough to handle. If it is not easy to handle, place the dough in the refrigerator to chill for 30 to 60 minutes.
Prep three (or four depending on what size you have) large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Divide the dough into six pieces. Form logs that are approximately 2 1/2″ wide by 10″ long. Place two logs on each of the three cookie sheets. Unless you can fit two sheets on one oven shelf, you will need to bake the biscotti in batches.
Bake at 375o F for 20 minutes. Set on cookie racks to cool for 10 minutes. After cooling, cut each strip into 3/4″ slices on an angle.
For the second baking, place the cut biscotti bottom side down on cookie sheets without the biscotti touching each other. Bake at 300o F for approximately 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. If you like really crunchy biscotti, bake for another 5 minutes. Just keep on eye on them so that they don’t darken too much. You might want to cover them loosely with aluminum foil in that case.
Source: A frantastic original
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