Biscotti

Also known as cantucci, these Italian biscuits are dunkers. There is something pleasing about the sophistication of an Italian biscuit marrying up with the British penchant for dunking biscuits. The word ‘biscuit’ originally comes from the French, meaning twice cooked and these are indeed baked twice. This makes fifteen biscuits. To make them vegan, you can have a look at this recipe by the Domestic Gothess but I suspect swapping the dairy items below for non-dairy equivalents would work too.

Really these should be made with toasted whole almonds but I made them to use up some stray raisins and chocolate chips. They would be lovely with hazelnuts or pistachio & dried cranberries with some orange zest. They are often made at Christmas (but not exclusively so) therefore dried mixed peel could be a nice addition. You could also add half a teaspoon of fennel seeds, lightly bashed in a pestle and mortar but I will leave this up to you as it is quite a grown up flavour in biscuits.

Ingredients

125g plain flour

125g caster sugar

75g nuts, dried fruit and/or chocolate chips

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

2 heaped tablespoons of yoghurt

30g butter

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 180C and weigh out the flour, sugar, baking powder and dried fruit, nuts and/or chocolate chips into a mixing bowl. Melt the butter and add it and the yoghurt to the dry ingredients. Bring the ingredients together to create a soft dough; it shouldn’t be too sticky. Divide the dough in two and shape into two sausage shapes, about six inches long each, on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Flatten each slightly.
  1. Bake for 20 minutes at 180C. The biscuit dough logs should be golden brown; leave them in the oven for another five minutes if needed. Take the tray out of the oven and reduce the heat to 150C. Leave your two logs to cool for ten minutes.
  1. Slice them up, at a slight angle. Cut the dough gently as you don’t want the biscuits to crumble.
  1. Bake the slices for 10 minutes before turning them over and baking for another ten minutes on the other side. They will be soft enough if you eat them warm but will become much crunchier as they cool.

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