Breakfast Biscotti

I must admit I'm fairly new to biscotti. Last summer I had my first biscotti at an Italian restaurant. I love that these twice-baked Italian cookies are purposely made for dunking into coffee (or tea in my case). It's so wonderful how a hard-baked cookie can transform into a soft and moist cookie when you dunk it! Not only that, but they are so easy to make! The day I made these, I was drinking tea round the clock just to eat the biscotti. Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Breakfast Biscotti recipe: Nigella Lawson - Feast

Ingredients:
- 1 egg
- ½ cup superfine sugar
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- few drops almond extract
- ¾ cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅓ cup natural shelled almonds (I used sliced almonds)
- ⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Whisk the egg and sugar until pale and moussily thick; I use an electric mixer here, as you want the mixture whipped enough so that when you lift the whisk attachment out of it, you are left with a trail of ribbons. Beat in the vanilla and almonds extracts, and then slowly fold in the flour, baking powder and salt.
- When the batter's all combined, fold in the whole almonds and chocolate pieces, and then form the dough into a loaf-like log of about 10 × 2 inches, slightly tapering the ends.
- Lay the biscotti log on to a piece of baking parchment on a baking sheet and cook for 25 minutes: it will be a pale brown color. Leave for 5 minutes to harden slightly, and then cut diagonal slants of about ½ in thickness along the length of the loaf to give finger-like pieces.
- Put these back on to the parchment paper covered baking sheet and cook again for another 10 minutes, turn the biscotti over and then cook for another 5 minutes. Let the golden brown biscotti cool on a rack and then store them in an airtight container ready to be plucked and dunked at a moment's anticipatory notice.


The pile of biscotti-dough! It was quite tricky forming the dough into a log because the dough was very sticky.

Twice-baked and ready to be dunked.

Chocolate chips, almonds, all in a cookie - a very sweeeeeet breakfast indeed!

Happy Thanksgiving! Merci to all of you for taking the time to visit my blog :)!