Don’t make lemon biscotti. Come on now, why would I do something as logical as that? Life’s always going to be giving you lemons, so why should I busy myself trying to use them all up, when I don’t even want life’s god damn lemons?? Erm… So the recipe I decided to mutliate this time from VegWeb was originally a lemon biscotti, but… Well… To be perfectly frank? I only chose it because I couldn’t find anything else, and it had good ratings. I wanted something crunchy and nutty, and although I had never made biscotti before, what was to stop me from multilating yet another innocent cookie?
To make a long story short, as you can see, it all worked out in the end, but not without its fun little dramas along the way. Oh, and I appoligize for this terrible shot; The plate was a really busy birthday-themed confetti extravaganza, and all the other pictures I took of the finished product were blurry. Just my luck, huh?
Okay, so I first made the obvious substitution of almond extract for the lemon juice, and near the end I added in about 1/2 cup of toasted sliced almonds. While I was mixing the dough, however, it just seemed so dry… Now I know it’s a dry dough by nature, but we’re talking wet sand here. Maybe I had a brain fart when it came to adding in margarine… Like using 1/4 cup instead of 1/4 pound… That’s probably it, because I’m too lazy to think about measurements in weight most of the time. So I ended up pouring in nearly 1/4 cup of additional oil… Yikes! It came together nicely though, so I still was optimistic.
I dumped out the contents of the mixer and formed a very lovely little biscotti loaf ontop of my floured baking sheet. This was my favorite part – it had such a smooth, creamy complexion, studded with dark and toasty almonds… Mmm! If only I could have served it raw!
…But that would have been a bit too weird, even for me. So into heat it went… And remained, for an extra 10 – 20 minutes. For some reason, it took its precious time baking and took nearly twice as long in the end as I had thought I would have to sacrifice to watch it.
Still in brick-form, it waited to be sliced. As you can see, the flour around it seems to have absorbed some of the extra oils that seeped out as it cooked… Worried that it was going to be underbaked, I continued to nuke the biscotti after slicing, turning, and turning yet again. The cookies then ended up rather large, so I cut those in half after they were completely cooled [And crispy!]
To make them more fun to dip into a cup of coffee or tea, I topped them with a thin zig-zag of plain confectioner’s sugar glaze, and upped the sweetness a touch. My mother seemed to enjoy them, but I was a bit unimpressed. The whole concept of biscotti is really interesting to me, so I will undoubtedly try a different method in the future… Maybe I should have just gone with lemon!
I’ve never actually made biscotti, but I like it quite a lot. Especially when it’s dipped in chocolate. Once, back in my pre-vegan days, I worked at a bagel shop that sold these lemon-almond biscotti dipped in white chocolate. Oh lord. So good. Perhaps some chocolate could’ve helped these out? Or maybe an orange-chocolate chip biscotti instead of lemon? I love lemon anything, but orange and chocolate is like… unsinkable. Especially with some hazelnuts thrown in.
Okay, now I really want to make biscotti.
Steal away! That way I can steal it back once you’ve perfected it. :)
ABC vegan cookie company now makes biscotti. I’d never had one before. They are yummy although a bit too much of baking soda.