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Wednesday 21 December 2011

Holy Biscotti!

"What's siscotti?" asks Dad.
"BIS-cotti," replies Mum.
"Escotti.  What's that?"
"Biscotti," laughs Mum, "is an Italian biscuit."

 I have never baked biscotti before.  Nor have I really been interested in seeking it out.  It seems to me that the humble biscotti lacks a certain production about it.  No fanfare in the form of mountains of cascading cream, not enough personality to take centre stage and stand alone. No.  Biscotti merely acts as complementary when accompanying a strong, rich espresso - a submissive trophy wife, if you will.
However, out of the blue, I decided that I MUST bake biscotti.  A traditional recipe would not do.  I felt that in order to give this biscotti a fighting chance -  in order to give this biscotti permission to shine - that I must carefully hand pick the flavours that were to grace my oven.  Vanilla, milk chocolate and roasted hazelnut was to form the initial experiment, followed by Double Chocolate and roasted hazelnut. 
The batter was less than impressive but came together magically as I kneaded: a beautifully theraputic endeavour. I must admit that I was enamoured with the slightly knobbly logs that came out of the oven after 35 minutes.  I was even more excited by the aromas that quickly filled my house as soon as those little babies entered the oven: layers of vanilla and toasting hazelnut mixed with the smell of buttery cookies.  It was to die for! Naturally, the second batch followed quickly. 
I gazed proudly upon my logs of biscotti, congratulating myself and even uploading a quick piccie to facebook so that all of my friends could do the same.
As soon as I opened my eyes this morning, I was eager to set to work, carefully slicing each log before placing each little darling piece back onto a baking tray and into the oven.  That glorious smell once again spread into each corner of the house and set my tummy rumbling.  Nothing else was going to surpass these crunchy morsels and of course, they went down extremely well with a cup of raspberry tea.  Perhaps not so traditional but thoroughly enjoyable at the same time.  Once I had deemed my crunchy little bikkies to be of a high enough standard for my boxes of Christmas love, they were wrapped up nice and tight ready to warm the hearts of my favourite people.

I am absolutely devastated about what I have clearly been missing out on all these years. Oh well, I've got an awful lot of making up to do with you, Biscotti.

F. x

1 comment:

  1. I've just had another two with my cup of white tea! Yum, yum, yum - can I have some more please? Mum xxx

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