Once Were Biscotti

hey-ho sugar lovers.

This month's Cookie Carnival extravaganza, brought to you by the good people at The Clean Plate Club, is Chocolate and Hazelnut Biscotti. Could three words in the English language be more seductive (OK, one of the words is Italian, but you know what I mean).

I baked up a bunch of these with glee and wonder. They were fabbo. Here's how I did it:

Chocolate and Hazelnut Biscotti

ingredients
1 1/2 cups hazelnuts, toasted and skinned
3 cups plain flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn baking soda
1/2 tspn salt
250gm unsalted butter, room temp
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 tspns vanilla essence
1/2 tspn almond essence
1 cup choc chips

method
heat oven to 180 degrees celcius and line large, heavy baking sheet with parchment paper

grind 1/2 cup hazelnuts and set aside

beat butter and sugar til creamy. add eggs and essences and beat until well combined

whisk four, cocoa, baking powder and soda and salt together in another bowl and then add to the wet ingredients, and beat in well

gently mix through both lots of nuts and choc chips

mould into two logs and back 12cm apart (they will spread a lot in the oven) and bake 35 mins

remove and cool for 15 minutes, but leave the oven on

slice into 1.5cm thick biscuits, lie flat on baking tray and bake for another 15 minutes

Now, there are two major problems with this recipe. Firsly the dough is so seriously delicious that you may be forced to eat it all before it even makes it into the oven.

Secondly, it made a lot of biscotti. I gave some to BBITW for her birthday. Took some others for a farewell morning tea at work. Oh look - visitors - well I have some for them. Before you knew it, I was all out. And now this is the only photo I have for you:

birthday cake

Happy Birthday to JC from Dumpling Girl, who ticks over another year today.

To celebrate we had dinner last night at the well known China Town eatery Ying Chow. Snake beans with chili, BBC, aniseed duck and salt and pepper squid. JC said she thought the squid tasted of ammonia. Luckily I couldn't taste it so I tucked into that big time. and the beans. I love beans, they're one of my favourite vegetables.

Then we came back to my place to huddle around the heater and have desert. I nicked a recipe for individual gooey chocolate cakes from Joy The Baker's fabbo site.

Gooey Chocolate Cake
1/3 c plain flour
3 tblsn cocoa powder
pinch salt
120g roughly chopped chocolate
25g finely chopped chocolate
125g butter, cut into cubes
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
6 tblsn sugar

method
1. Heat oven to 220 degrees Celsius
2. Butter and flour 6 muffin tins
3. Sift cocoa, flour and salt
4. Place roughly chopped chocolate and butter over a double boiler until just melted
5. While chocolate is melting, whisk together the eggs and the yolks. Add sugar and whisk for approximately 2 minutes, to combine well
6. Add the dry ingredients to the eggs and stir together, but using a whisk, until just combined.
7. Little by little stir through the chocolate
8. Spoon this mixture into the greased muffin tins. Sprinkle with the finely chopped chocolate
9. Bake for 13 minutes. As they are soft in the middle there is no way to test them. Just trust your timer and take them out


10. Let cool for 3 minutes before carefully turning out and then lifting very, very gently onto serving plate.

We ate ours with praline icecream. They're very runny inside (as you can see from the leak in the photo. When I say carefully turn out and transfer them, I mean carefully!!!). Considering the amount of butter and egg for six cakes you can imagine how heavy they are. I just ate one of the left overs cold and that was pretty good too, but not as good as straight from the oven.

I feel I've earned a cake, as I've been weeding all morning. Lordy knows my garden needs it. I'd love to be a good gardener and grown my own vegetables, but so far the only thing I've had any success with at all is weeds. I guess you can't be a cook and a gardener too? Or maybe my thumb is just black. At the moment it's blue from digging around in a freezing wet garden. I can see a cup of tea and hot shower in my near future!