Originally uploaded by wjharrison77.
My kitchen has been well used this weekend. Perhaps even over-worked. Spent hours on Friday night making dishes to take to a hen day lunch -that’s a batchelorette party to non-Brits. Made a lentil salad, spiced couscous and an aubergine dish. That was the evening of the crab too. And today I dealt with my post-hen night, fuzzy head by cooking up a storm: crab cakes for dinner; roasted tomato and onion soup for this week’s lunches; gyoza for the freezer and almond biscotti for reading the newspaper.
I’ll share the biscotti recipe first. I assumed “biscotti” meant biscuit in Italian. Found out today that it actually means twice baked.
Almond Biscotti
250g plain flour
200g caster sugar
50g ground almonds
2 medium eggs
1 egg seperated – yolk for dough, white for glazing
1/2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
100g whole almonds, toasted
- Sieve flour, sugar, ground almonds and baking powder.
- Add salt, eggs (including extra yolk) and vanilla essence. Mix until mixture turns into a sticky ball of dough. You may need to use a tiny bit of water if the mixture if too dry.
- On a floury suface with floury hands knead the whole almonds into the dough.
- Split the dough mixture in two and roll into logs, approximately 5cm wide.
- Place logs on seperate baking trays lined with baking paper, brush with egg white and place in a 180oC pre-heated oven. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown and firm.
- Remove trays from the oven and lower temperature of oven to 140oC. Once the biscotti have cooled slightly cut the logs into 5cm wide slices.
- Bake the slices in the oven cut-side up for 30 mins.
- Leave to cool and serve.
I like my biscotti dunked in coffee. Sicilians apparently prefer them with Moscato (sweet) wine. Dunking biscuits in wine? Can’t quite imagine..
A Wee Bit of Cooking 
Hi, not even going to mention the crab! Did you have a good hen day lunch? And is that a moomin on your mug?
The lunch/entire day was great, thank you!
And yes, that is a moomin. A Finnish company called Iittala make the mugs and I adore them! Always pick one up whenever I visit a Nordic country.
Hi, came over to tell you I loved the Magic Faraway Tree series too! I must read it all over again. And I too loved A Suitable Boy – I bought it with my first bonus in my first job!
Sra – They are wonderful! Would be interested to read which books you’d choose..
Hi, I found your site after you left a comment on another site about zaru soba. If you want to get hold of soba (buckwheat) noodles you can get them mail order from Japan Centre in London. The reason I’m looking at your biscotti recipe is that a Japanese friend made matcha (powdered green tea) biscotti, I guess pretty much the same recipe but with matcha added to it. Really delicious!
Robin – Zaru soba, you say? Wish I could remember what I was commenting on! Thanks for the info anyhow. 🙂
Hi there,
Just wanted to stop by to thank you for your lovely biscotti recipe. I just bought an espresso machine and was looking for the perfect biscuit to compliment my coffees – I made a batch today and I’ve certainly found it. So simple and delicious – 5 stars from me x