Fast & Easy Biscotti

 Biscotti. A coffeehouse indulgence. Or from a box at the grocery store. Or homemade--but gosh, what a hassle! I've made biscotti from scratch a few times and although these twice-baked cookies are actually pretty simple, they seem intimidating. Get the dough just right. Add ingredients. Hope they hold together okay when they're finished. Geez.

I made these biscotti recently, for a presentation where I was supposed to bring some sort of snack. The original recipe doesn't call for chocolate--but chocolate goes so well with coffee. If you're not a chocolate person, leave it out. The base for these biscotti allows you a lot of flexibility with your ingredients, so work with what you have. I happened to want to make my biscotti tropical, since cinnamon and nutmeg are already tropical flavors (so is vanilla, for that matter), so I added papaya, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and sesame seeds.

When I worked my dough, it came out a bit drier than I would have liked so I added some cold coffee (about 1 tablespoon) to the dough. Why coffee instead of water? Extra flavor -- specifically an earthy flavor that would blend well with tropical flavors I was already using.



Fast & Easy Biscotti (with papaya, chocolate, and sesame seeds)
1 (16.5 or 18-ounce) roll refrigerated sugar cookie dough

2/3 cup all-purpose, whole wheat flour
1 ½ cups chopped papaya, coarsely chopped semi-sweet chocolate chips, and sesame seeds*
2 tablespoons grated orange zest

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (a few drops of orange extract can be added as well)
1 tablespoon cold coffee, or water**

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray a cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Break up the cookie dough into large bowl; let stand for 10–15 minutes to soften.

Add flour, cranberries, orange zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla extract to the cookie dough; mix well with your fingers, the paddle attachment of an electric stand mixer, or a wooden spoon. Add coffee/water if needed so that the dough just holds together.

Divide dough into two equal halves. On the cookie sheet, shape each dough half into a 12 x 2-inch rectangle, 3/4-inch high, spacing the dough halves about 3 inches apart.

Bake for 26–28 minutes or until the logs are deep golden brown and spring back in the center when touched. Remove sheet from oven; keep oven on. Let cool for 3-4 minutes and then using two pancake turners, lift logs, one at a time, from the cookie sheet to a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, cut one of the logs into 3/4-inch wide slices. Note: for longer biscotti, cut at a deep diagonal; for shorter biscotti, cut log crosswise. Repeat with second log.

Place slices on the same cookie sheet (do not worry about the spacing). Bake slices for 5 minutes; remove from oven and turn over all of the slices. Return cookie sheet to oven and bake for 5 minutes longer. Turn off oven and let biscotti sit in oven for approximately 15 more minutes.

Remove sheet from oven and let cool for 10 minutes and then transfer biscotti to a wire rack; cool completely.


Makes 28 biscotti.
 
*Other fun combinations might include:

• Cranberries, chocolate chips/white chocolate chips, pistachios
• Cinnamon chips and white chocolate chips
• White chocolate chips and pecans
• Pecans and dried apricots

**You'll want the dough to hold together just enough to form it into two logs. You do not want sticky dough. Add additional liquid only if needed.

Reese's Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

Not long ago, I was baking with my friend Annie of Simple Gifts. We were in the mood to experiment and we wanted something we could decorate. We finally decided to make cupcakes. We set our friend Lauren on the task of finding a straight-forward cucpcake recipe that we could stick Reese's miniatures in and when I vetoed chocolate cupcakes, Lauren decided on a simple vanilla cupcake--an Amy Sedaris recipe.

Amy Sedaris is the author of Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People -- this is a super-fun (and somewhat snarky/humorous) book and I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, among others. The cupcake recipe we used comes from I Like You and your can find the recipe here.

Beating up the Cake Batter--it always feels so good!

Nestle in a Reese's Cup (Mini)

Cover wiht more batter until cups are 2/3 full

We placed a miniature Reese's cup in each of the cupcake tins after we'd filled it halfway with batter, and then covered the Reese's cup with batter, until each cup was about 2/3 full. We used a combination of mini-cupcakes and regular-sized cupcakes and with the mini-cakes we cut the miniature Reese's cups in half.

Once the cupcakes baked and cooled, we topped them with the peanut butter frosting found modified from the recipe found here. Our changes appear below.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter (we used reduced fat, because that's what we had on hand)

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/3 cup skim milk

We piped the frosting onto the cupcakes and then sprinkled the top with chopped dark chocolate--and we couldn't resist adding M&Ms to a few of them.

Honey-Wheat Bread

On Monday, I went to watch Northern Exposure at a friend's house. When I walked in, the house smelled of bread--lovely!--and another friend and I talked about how nice it would be to make bread. I didn't know if we'd follow through--there are so many things that can get in the way of a simple afternoon of baking.

But yesterday, after we worked in the local food co-op for a while, we went to my place and made a modified version of the Honey-Wheat Bread from The All New Good Housekeeping Cookbook. I looked through several recipes before landing on this one. I wanted one that was at least 1/2 whole wheat. I wanted one that made more than 1 loaf. I wanted one that didn't use 7-10 cups of flour because I didn't have a big enough container for it to proof in. I wanted one that didn't need a sponge since I hadn't started one on Tuesday. And I wanted one I wouldn't have to go buy additional ingredients to make.

I substituted in some bread flour because it has a higher gluten content. The original recipe also calls for slightly less yeast and coating the loaves with flour instead of oatmeal. I finished a bottle of honey with this, so my bread has a little extra honey.

I also used white whole wheat, because it seems to work better in soft bread recipes than regular whole wheat, which works fantastically in really hearty bread recipes.

My friend and I got the basic set of ingredients together, kneaded the dough, and then worked and chatted in my living room while the dough rose the first time. By the time the bread was finished, about 3 hours after we'd started, the entire house smelled absolutely lovely and I wondered--again--why I don't make bread more often.

I served this with a carrot-ginger soup for dinner. We made open-faced hummus and grilled baby Swiss cheese sandwiches. It stood up quite nicely to the garlicky-hummus (which blends well with baby Swiss) and the sweet-richness of carrot-ginger soup.

Honey-Wheat Bread

1 1/2 cups warm water (105-115 degrees)

5 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup honey

1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 large egg

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup bread flour

about 2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon oatmeal, for topping (old-fashioned or quick, not instant)

Olive oil

In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup warm water (about the temperature you'd give to an infant, if you don't have a food thermometer), yeast, and sugar. Stir to dissolve. Let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in remaining 1 cup of warm water, honey, butter, egg, salt, and whole-wheat flour until smooth. Gradually stir in 1 cup bread flour and 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour.

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 7-10 minutes, working in enough of the remaining 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour to form a slightly tacky dough. (A slightly sticky dough is desirable in most bread recipes).

Shape the dough into a ball; place in a bowl coated with olive oil and turn the dough to cover with oil. Loosely cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a tea towel (not terry cloth) and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 1/2 hours.

Punch down the dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and cut in half; cover and let rest 10 minutes. On a large ungreased cookie sheet, shape each dough lump into a 6" x 4.5" ovals. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 30 minutes. With a serrated knife, cut three 3-inch-long and 1/4-inch deep diagonal slashes across tops of loaves.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sprinkle oatmeal on top of loaves. Bake until loaves sound hollow when lightly tapped on the bottom, about 40 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.