Chocolate Almond Biscotti for Sweet Punch

Biscotti is an Italian biscuit, baked twice to make it crunchy. Whenever I pass by Starbucks, I am tempted to go in, not for the coffee (I don't drink coffee) but for the biscotti... 🙂 Anyways, when I saw this month's sweet punch, I did not want to miss the bake. As usual, I put off baking it until the last minute and yesterday, I baked it with the ingredients that I had at home. I was reluctant to bake it yesterday as the weather was very bad and I was afraid I won’t be able to take good pictures. Fortunately, sun peeked out of the clouds a little bit and was able to take ok pictures! 🙂

Sweet punch team chose Joy of Baking and I followed the recipe with a few substitutions. I made the substitutions as I did not have all the ingredients in my pantry. The substitutions I made are:

• The recipe called for 4 oz. of semi-sweet or bitter sweet chocolate or chocolate chips. I had 3 oz. of semi chocolate bars and substituted the rest with ⅓ cup (approx. 1 oz, I did not weight them and guessed it to be ⅓ cup of chips) of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
• The recipe called for 1 tsp. of baking powder. After the started the preparation, I realized I had only ½ tsp. of baking powder. I substituted the other half with ⅛ tsp. of baking soda.
• Also, the recipe called for 110gm. or ¾ cups of almond and I had only 99gms (3½ oz).

I would recommend following the original recipe and not the substitutions I made, unless all the ingredients are not available. The recipe below is the original recipe.

Source: Joy of Baking
Total Time: 65- 70 minutes
Preparation: 10-15 minutes
Baking Time: 45 minutes
Resting Time: 10 minutes
Yields: 14 – 16 Biscotti

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup or 110 gms. blanched chopped Almonds (I used 99gms)
• 4 oz. or 110 grams Semi-Sweet or Bittersweet Chocolate squares chopped or use Chocolate Chips instead
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder
• ¼ tsp. Salt
• 1 ¾ cups or 225 gms. All Purpose Flour
• ⅔ cup or 135 gms. Granulated Sugar
• 2 large Eggs at room temperature (I left it on the counter top for couple of hours)
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract

Preparation:

• Toast almonds for 5-7 minutes until lightly toasted and let them cool. Chop them coarsely. I bought chopped blanched almonds and coarsely chopped them. I think it would have been fine even if I did not coarsely chop them.
• If using chocolate squares, chop the chocolate squares into ½ inch pieces. I would prefer using chocolate chips though.
• Sift together salt, baking powder, flour and keep aside.
• Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
• In a big bowl, beat eggs and sugar until light yellow and fluffy. It would take about 5-7 minutes with a hand held electric beater/mixer. When the beaters are raised, the batter should drop slowly as a ribbon (as mentioned in the original recipe).
• Add vanilla extract and mix well.
• Fold in the sifted flour mixture. I used the fold mode of my beater. Be careful here. The dough is stiff and the beaters will move slowly. Or you can fold in the flour using a spatula.
• Add the almonds, chocolate and mix well until well incorporated into the dough.
• Place the dough on the lined baking tray and shape it into a log, a 12” long & 3 ½” wide log/loaf. If required wet hands as the dough is sticky. I did not wet my hands though.
• Bake it in a 350F preheated oven for 25 minutes or until the loaf is firm. I was not use how firm the dough ought to be hence baked it for 30 minutes. I felt 25 minutes would have been sufficient.
• Remove the loaf/log of biscotti and cool it on a wire rack for 10 minutes.
• Reduce the oven temperature to 325F. as we need to bake the biscotti again.
• Slice the biscotti loaf diagonally into ¾” slices.
  

  

• Transfer the slices onto the baking tray, sliced side facing the tray.
  

  

• Bake the biscotti for 10 minutes on 325F, turn the biscotti and bake for another 10 minutes or until light golden brown.
• Transfer them to a cooling rack and let them cool.
• Once cool, store them in an airtight container.