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:

easter cakes

hurrah! the tired, grumpy BHG of yesterday is gone. and in her place (aside from filthy kitchen) is a lovely array of easter cupcakes, which will be the take home prizes after tonight's round dinner party.

I adapted the cake recipe from the february CCH entry from the cupcakery. i altered it a little to suit what i had at home, so this is how i did it:

hazelnut and chocolate cupcakes
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup raw caster sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
125g butter, cut into pieces
1 large egg
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup frangelico
200ml cream
1/2 cup milk
2 cups chocolate chips, or cooking chocolate finely chopped (yes, you read right 2 cups!)
1 cup chopped hazelnuts

1. place flour, sugars, baking powder and butter in a bowl and beat until nearly combined, and butter is clumped into small pieces.

2. add the egg, vanilla and frangelico. what there's only a little frangelico in the bottle. may as well drink it. mmmmmm.....

3. add the cream and enough milk to form a droppable batter.

4. fold in the nuts and the chocolate pieces

5. spoon into paper lined trays (this batter made about 18 big cakes for me) and bake at 180 degrees for approx 15 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. cool complete on a rack before icing.

i totally made up the icing, again to suit what i had in the fridge... still to hot to go to the shops.

1.in a large bowl mix 260g icing sugar with 125 softened cream cheese.

2. over a double boiler melt 160gm milk chocolate with 60gm butter, until just melted. cool a little and add to sugar and cream cheese.

this made a fairly thick icing, but that's ok because i wanted to draw the bunnies, and eggs and chicks (yes, that's what they are) on the top. i did this with a wiltons gliter icing pen.

these cakes are very moist, i guess from the cream, and very rich with all of that chocolate. i really chose this because i had a lot of hazelnuts in the pantry, but i'm sure i'll use this recipe again.

i was a bit doubtful about wasting all that frangelico on cake batter. i ate one of the cakes straight out of the oven, while the chocolate was still melted, and you couldn't taste it at all. this morning the flavour is stronger, but i'm wondering if hazelnut oil wouldn't give the same result. then there'd be more frangelico for me! hurrah!