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Chocolate Almond Biscotti

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Happy February!  Earlier in the week I shared this flourless chocolate cookie recipe and declared that I would be sharing more chocolate recipes as we get closer and closer to Valentine’s Day, a day that should be full of chocolate.  The name of this blog is Hottie Biscotti, but I’m fairly confident that I’ve only shared one biscotti recipe.  So I thought it only appropriate to make some chocolate biscotti.

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Biscotti means “twice-baked”.  The dough is baked once in a log, allowed to cool slightly, then sliced into pieces and baked again creating a crunchy cookie that begs to be dipped into your hot beverage of choice.  Coffee is mine, but tea or hot chocolate would do just fine.  And they’re delicious eaten just as a cookie without any dipping.

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This biscotti is full of almonds and chocolate chips, but isn’t too sweet, making it the perfect morning or afternoon snack.  They would be wonderful crumbled up over a bowl of vanilla ice cream.  They’d also make great little gifts.

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This recipe is from Dave Lebovitz, a pastry chef whose blog I started reading a few months ago.  It’s a great mix of recipes, stories about life in Paris, cooking tips and restaurant reviews.  It’s been a fun change of pace in blog reading for me, since very few of the blogs I read are written by chefs, most are home cooks like myself.  Check it out and drool over some French food and wine, learn some things you didn’t know and grab some great recipes.

Chocolate Almond Biscotti

From Dave Lebovitz

Makes about 26 cookies

Ingredients

For Biscotti

  • 2 cups flour
  • 3/4 cup good cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 cup sliced almonds
  • 3/4 cup chocolate chips
  • 1 egg for glaze
  • raw sugar or coarse sugar for sprinkling

For Chocolate Dipping

  • 4 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
  • 2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In a medium bowl sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer combine eggs, sugar and extracts and mix until well combined.
  4. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, then add in almonds and chocolate chips and mix until evenly distributed.  The dough will be very stiff.
  5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.  Divide dough in half and form each half into a log, about 8 or 9 inches long and 3/4 inch high.
  6. Transfer each log to the parchment lined baking sheet.
  7. Whisk egg and brush tops of each log, then sprinkle with sugar.
  8. Bake for 25 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let cool for 15 minutes.  Move logs to a cutting board and slice on the diagonal into 1/2 inch pieces.  A serrated knife works well for this.
  9. Place slices back on the parchment lined cookie sheet and return to the oven for 15-20 minutes, then flip cookies over and cook for another 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven, transfer to a cooking rack and let cool completely.
  10. You can coat one side in chocolate if you’d like to or leave them plain.  To coat in chocolate: melt chocolate and vegetable oil over low heat, stirring constantly until chocolate has just melted.  Remove from the heat and spread chocolate onto one side of the biscotti in a thin layer.  Move to a clean piece of parchment and allow the chocolate to set.

 

 

 

Flourless Triple Chocolate Cookies

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Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and while it’s not my favorite holiday, it is a perfect excuse to make and enjoy loads of sweet treats.  It’s also a good excuse to enjoy an especially  nice meal with your sweetheart, either at home or out.  Candles and roses required of course.

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In anticipation of Valentine’s Day I’ve decided to spend the next couple of weeks baking and sharing some delicious Valentine’s Day goodies.  By the time it rolls around my husband is probably going to be sick of chocolate, but that’s ok.  I’ll pick up the slack.  I have this amazing ability to endure baked goods and sugar beyond what is considered normal.  What can I say, it’s a gift!

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These are not your typical chocolate cookie since they’re flourless (gluten free!) and end up being very crunchy on the outside with just a little bit of gooey middle.  Whole Foods makes a similar cookie that has walnuts which I kind of love.  You could easily adds nuts into this cookie if you’d like.  The pure chocolately goodness of them without nuts is wonderful, though.  The cocoa powder, semi sweet and milk chocolate chips makes these triple chocolate, but you could opt for just one kind of chip, or go crazy and add in dark chocolate chunks as well.

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This cookie batter/dough comes together in no time and while you can use a stand mixer, you don’t need one.  The ingredients are simple and you likely have them all in your kitchen right now.  You definitely need to bake these cookies on parchment paper or a nonstick silicon mat.  They stick a little, even to the parchment, so use a stiff spatula (or a small offset one) to get underneath the cookies as you’re taking them off the sheet.  This way you won’t lose any chocolate pieces.  That would be a tragedy.

Watch out for little hands.  They’ll swoop down when you least expect it and steal these.  I let her eat the whole thing by the way.  Right before dinner.  Great parenting over here.

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Flourless Triple Chocolate Cookies

From Food 52

Makes 24-30 cookies

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
  • 1/2 cup good cocoa
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3 egg whites
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chunks or chips
  • 1 1/4 cup milk chocolate chunks or chips
  • 1/2-1 cup nuts, toasted and chopped, optional
  • Sea salt flakes, optional

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment (you’ll need more parchment for each batch).
  3. Whisk together powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon and salt.
  4. Beat in the egg whites until well combined, then mix in vanilla.
  5. Fold in chocolate chips/chunks and nuts if desired.
  6. Spoon batter, 2 rounded teaspoons per cookie, onto your cookie sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart for spreading.  I found I could fit 6-8 cookies per sheet without any problems.  Sprinkle each cookie with salt if desired.
  7. Bake for 12-14 minutes until cookies look just set and dry on top with some cracking.  Let cool on the pan for a few minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Chunk Pudding Cookies

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In college a friend gave me a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that uses pudding mix in the dough resulting in an extra soft and tasty cookie.  Of course I lost the recipe in one of the 4 moves I’ve made across Texas in the last 5 years.  I came across this recipe this past weekend and decided to see if they were like Ashley’s.

I found the recipe on Kraft foods website. Here is the link.

They were not quite the same, but they were good.  I used some high quality milk and white chocolate in these cookies which made them extra special.  Good chocolate really does make a difference.  Chopping off a block of chocolate instead of using chips also makes a difference in the texture of the chocolate in the finished cookie.

I used half butter and half shortening in these, which makes the cookies more sturdy and causes them to spread less, but I will use all butter next time.  Some cookies can take the half shortening short cut without much of a sacrifice of flavor….but not this cookie.  For some reason they tasted too fake to me and too much like a grocery store cookie instead of a homemade one.

All of that negativity doesn’t make these cookies at all un-tasty.  I really liked how soft and chewy they were and absolutely loved the white and milk chocolate chunks.  Crazy good.

Chocolate Chunk Pudding Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter, room temp
  • 1/2 cup shortening (or butter)
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 package (3.4 oz) vanilla pudding mix
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 taespoon baking soda
  • 2 1/4 cups flour
  • 6 ounces chopped milk chocolate
  • 4 ounces chopped white chocolate
Directions
  1. Heat oven to 375°F.
  2. Beat butter, sugars, dry pudding mix and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until blended.
  3. Add eggs and baking soda; mix well.
  4. Gradually add flour, beating after each addition until well blended.
  5. Stir in chocolate.
  6. Drop teaspoonfuls of dough, 2 inches apart, onto baking sheets.
  7. Bake 8 to 10 min. or until golden brown. Cool 3 min. on baking sheets. Remove to wire racks. Cool completely.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

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The success of the peanut butter M&M cookie last week inspired me to try the cookie again, but this time with chocolate chips.  I changed the amount of sugars in this cookie.  I wish I could claim that I was being purposefully experimental and had some great reason for changing the ratio of white to brown sugar.  The truth is that I didn’t have enough brown sugar left.

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So I used 3/4 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup white sugar.  All the rest of the ingredients remained the same.  I used 1 cup of milk chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped 60% cacao Callebaut from a block that I had left over from another recipe.

I think this cookie may be my new favorite.  I love the texture and flavor.  Even with the change in the sugar ratio they were delicious.  I did find them a bit less moist than the cookie with more brown sugar, but not enough to make them less tasty.

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