Biscotti

Finals, which seemed to last most of April and into May, can be all consuming.  Long gone are the days of elementary and middle school where homework was a couple of worksheets that once completed, were just that--complete.  In college, but particularly grad school, nothing is done until it's physically (or electronically) handed in.  There are always edits and improvements that can be made; thinking about them and then actually implementing them take up a lot of hours.  I find it important to step away from all that once in a while, and do something different.  In this case, it was baking for various family members I would be seeing for my dad's birthday/surprise reunion/long weekend in NoVA.

Following this recipe from Joy the Baker, I made biscotti for the first time.  It was a two step, spread out over three day process for me, which worked well given all of the school work on my plate.

First step was to candy the pecans.  Appetizing, no?

Even Keizo thought they looked a bit gross; odd coming from someone who likes and eats a lot of natto.  I think it looks pretty much the same, and the pecans smothered with cinnamon and nutmeg smelled a whole lot better.

For the biscotti part, I experimented with gluten-free flour for my cousin's sake.  It worked out pretty well, considering I didn't read all of the fine print about adding xanthan something or other until the dough was already in the oven.

Simple, straightforward ingredients.

Creaming the butter and sugar, then adding the egg and vanilla.

Folding in the pecans from two days before.  Some of the chunks had to be trimmed down with my handy dandy scissors.

The dough was then shaped into logs on parchment paper, baked, slightly cooled, sliced and "baked" again. For their second round in the oven, I turned off the oven and left the biscotti in there until it cooled down.  Seemed to do the trick, I got nice crunchy biscotti without running the oven for multiple hours.

I got out my best wrapping paper (ha ha) and some dollar ribbon to do up bundles to give away.

A few crumbs were all that was left over at the end.  I am happy to report, the biscotti was well received, and I look forward to experimenting with other (more chocolate-y) varieties!