By Greg B. So it was a boring Monday evening and I really did not want to work on lab work. Procrastination being the step-mother of invention, I took an inventory of my kitchen to see what projects I could complete that evening. Having gone fruit picking the weekend prior, I had a very large supply of berries which I decided to make into various cordials, but that is for another posting. I had been in the mood for some good anisette biscotti since having one at the symphony over the weekend and also having a drink of absinthe. Thus without really being sure what I was doing, I set forth to make biscotti to the best of my abilities.

“Biscotti’ is basically Italian for ‘biscuit’. Now in the US, our biscuits come in many flavors and shapes and sizes, usually with gravy, honey, butter and a big hearty meal alongside, be it breakfast or dinner. The Italians took a different approach, and truely, their biscuit is much more of a cookie. Doing a little internet research on the subject yieled an interesting little factoid, that the name for biscotti comes from two words “bis” and ‘cotto’ which means ‘twice baked’. This will come into play towards the end of this recipe because they are, in fact, twice baked. These cookies come in many different flavors, though the basic recipe will remain the same. So experiment as you like, orange liquer, more lemon zest, dried cranberries… and personalize your own biscotti!

Ingredients: (with future modifications)

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 12 tbsp melted butter
• 1/3 cup brandy
• 2 tbsp anise seed (add 1 tsp anise extract next time as well)
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• (will add lemon zest and shaved almonds next time and a little less butter, maybe 8 tbsp)

Spooning out the biscotti mixture

This recipe really is rather easy. Pre-heat your oven to 350 F. Mix the sugar and the butter together, whisking until creamy. Then add the eggs, one at a time making sure to beat them into the mixture fully. At this time, I like to take a separate bowl, combine the brandy, anise seed and vanilla extract (and future anise extract) into one mixture. Slowly mix in the flour to your egg-sugar-butter until about evenly mixed. You can either add the baking soda and salt to the flour earlier, or at this point as well. Mix it all up, add the brandy and herbs mixture, mix again. By this time the mixture should look basically like a cookie dough (not surprising, given that biscotti are basically a biscuit/cookie thing!).

This time when I made it, for some reason I spooned everything out onto a large cookie sheet with aluminum foil, but I spooned out the dough into smaller units to cut later. Next time I’ll just make a single, ovoid dough thing and cook it, though the cooking time may vary at that point due to the change in thickness… I’ll get back to you on that. I’d also recommend making it more long than thick, just so you dont run into any issues with it crumbling when being cut… Remember that presentation is half the battle when it comes to people liking your food!!! So basically, spoon out the

Post-first baking, sliced & pre-second baking

dough, leaving some room between everything so they don’tplump up together in the oven, and place in the oven for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees F. By the time this cooking process is almost done, the house should basically smell like Anise. Hope your roommates dont mind!

Check to see that they are basically a very light golden brown. Don’t worry if they are not as dark as you want them, that step will occur shortly. Remove them from the oven and place on a cooling rack. In about 15 minutes or so, when cool, you can slice them into sizes you feel appropriate (I think 1/2 to 3/4 inch thickness is good, but this is your cookie, so you call the shots in your kitchen). Place them back on the cookie sheet and return to the oven. You might want to lower the temp to 300 or 325, I’m still playing with this now, but it all depends on how moist your biscotti still is, how thick you cut it, etc. So play around and post comments here, I want to hear what you all have to say!

Finished biscotti, with Old Rasputin and espresso machine in background!

After about 10-15 minutes, take the biscotti out and flip them over and place back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes. By this time they should be a nice golden or dark brown. let them cool on the cooling rack and serve! They go very well with coffee, obviously or espresso (as you can see in the background of some of these pics, I have a nice little espresso machine). Really, for the limited amount of work this takes they really are worth the effort. I also have to add, since I am the beer guy, that these go very well with Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. Still the same play on the coffee flavors, chocolate malts in the beer with the crunchy sweet anisette of the biscotti. Delicious!