Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Biscotti

It’s a Stormy Monday. Mondays are best tolerated with cookies. For this I am grateful to my Sourdough Surprises group for this month’s prompt: biscotti. Biscotti means twice (bis) cooked (cotti). I was reading about how biscotti cookies were the preferred snack of warriors in ancient times because they kept so well. As I start residency in a few short weeks, I have been stockpiling a collection of survival foods that I can cook and stow away for dark call nights ahead. Izzy helped me find and adapt this recipe in The Joy of Cooking (her favorite bedtime story book), and I think here we have a winner:

Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Biscotti

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

2 cups white flour

1 1/3 cup wheat flour

½ tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

¼ cup sourdough starter (this replaces the oil in the original recipe)

1 ¼ cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 egg whites

2 tsp orange zest

1 tsp almond extract

1 tsp vanilla

1-2 cups dark chocolate chips

½ cup chopped hazelnut pieces (toasted)

Stir the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a small bowl. Separately, beat the eggs, whites, zest, almond and vanilla, sugar and sourdough starter together. Slowly add the flour. Let sit for 40 minutes on the counter. Divide the dough into two equal pieces and with each, roll out using flour to prevent sticking into an 11×1.5” log. Flatten against a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees and bake for 25 minutes. Remove and let cool slightly.

Cut on a steep diagonal the biscotti slices, as thick as you please, but probably less than an inch thick. Lay the slices flat on the parchment and bake again for 10 minutes on each side.

Bake until lightly browned. Transfer to a rack to cool.

When cool, melt 1-2 cups of dark chocolate chips in the microwave and add hazelnuts. Alternatively you could just melt the chocolate and sprinkle on the toasted hazelnut pieces. Dip one side of the biscotti piece in the melted chocolate, and prop up in a glass or bowl to set dry.

Tell your bulldog that next time you will make her some without any chocolate. In fact, you will make them chicken and beef flavored and call them Bulldog Biscotti. If she can’t wait, give her one of her favorite peanut butter homebrew dog biscuits. 

As seen on www.sourdoughsurprises.blogspot.com

Haiku #108 (April 18)

Raindrops are wearing

rubber boots and kicking at

my bedroom window.

Haiku #109 (April 19)

Ten mile baptism

Slatterly Park to the Lake:

clean inside and out.