- [Babish] Today's episode is sponsored by Sensodyne.
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National Coffee Day is right around the corner
on Wednesday, September 29th,
so don't let painful twinges from sensitive teeth
hold you back from your favorite iced or hot coffee,
the perfect pairing for the subject
of today's episode: biscotti.
Let's get down to basics.
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So traditional biscotti is a very simple cookie
that you can make by hand.
We add 250 grams or just shy
of two cups of all purpose flour,
one teaspoon baking powder,
1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt,
and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.
Tiny whisk together to evenly distribute
the salt and leaveners throughout the flour.
Then, in a separate, slightly smaller bowl,
we're gonna combine our wet stuff,
starting with three large eggs
that we're gonna crack in there,
which we're gonna whisk together
with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
and one teaspoon almond extract,
along with our sugar,
175 grams or just shy of a cup.
Go ahead and whisk together until it's relatively smooth.
Doesn't need to be fluffy or fully dissolved.
Then it's time to bring everybody together
in addition to 120 grams
or about 2/3 of a cup of whole almonds,
which you can see I'm being pedantic
about making sure that each one is cut in half.
Come on, any of you have better things to do?
Okay, here we go.
Dump those on into the flour,
along with the egg and sugar mixture.
And then we just gotta mix everybody together
using a rubber spatula until no dry pockets of flour remain.
And since biscotti are pretty dry and don't have much fat,
we don't have to worry as much about overmixing
as we normally would with other cookies.
We want these to be dry and snappy when they come out,
so if you overdevelop the gluten, no big deal.
Next up, we're prepping a rimmed baking sheet
with nonstick spray.
I like to spray an X in the center,
then more around each edge,
which is gonna hold our sheet of parchment paper in place.
Press that down until it's nice and flat,
and then dump the cookie dough on top.
And then, using lightly-wetted fingers
so the dough doesn't stick,
we're gonna shape this thing
into a sort of uniform log thing,
the width of which is going to determine your final cookies.
This thing is gonna more than double
in size in the oven, so plan accordingly.
Speaking of which, that's where it's headed next:
a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 25 to 30 minutes
until the dough emerges triumphant,
puffy, not too deeply browned, and well set.
And we're letting this guy cool for 10 minutes,
during which time we're gonna lower our oven temperature
to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pop this guy off the sheet tray
by virtue of the parchment paper,
and then it's time to begin slicing.
As you can see, the dough is pretty set all the way through.
The knife isn't dragging.
Nothing's getting pinched on wet dough.
So we'll end up with biscotti that has nice, clean facades.
Go ahead and slice her up as evenly as you can,
which in my case is not terribly evenly at all.
Keep the end pieces as snacks for the chef.
And then it's time to lay these guys back out on parchment
on their sides to bake once again at a lower temperature.
The word biscotti, after all,
is derived from the Latin biscoctus.
Pretty interesting, huh? No?
Yeah, you're right.
These guys are now headed
into the 300 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 to 15 minutes
or until their skyward facade feels relatively dry.
Then, we're giving 'em a flip,
and back into the oven they go for another 10 to 15 minutes
until once again dry on the other side.
Let 'em cool completely on the tray, and there you have it:
super easy, super classic almond biscotti,
which by any cookie metric is pretty dry and crisp,
which in its current form is pretty good.
But really, this thing is designed to be
in accompaniment to hot coffee or even sweet dessert wine,
something it can soak up to make it more palatable,
kinda like breakfast cereal and milk.
And this might've been okay for Italians in 300 AD,
but I am an American in the 21st century,
so I need chocolate and I need fixins.
Chocolate is easy enough.
You can temper it,
if you have that kind of time on your hands.
But it's also fine to just melt it in a double boiler.
Just make sure to take it off the heat
as soon as it's melted.
Overheating the chocolate can make the fat bloom
once it's cooled, which will taste just fine,
but it'll be covered in weird white streaks.
Once you've dipped the bottom of the biscotti
into the chocolate and let the excess drip off,
it's time to place it chocolate side down
on yet another parchment-lined baking sheet
so it can solidify, improving the biscotti,
your coffee, and your day.
And if you wanna throw some twists on the original recipe,
here's how you do it.
First, like all things in life,
this process is made inexorably easier by a stand mixer,
so if you got one of those, go ahead and bust it out.
Then for this first variation,
I've got 60 grams of dried cranberries
and 80 grams of unsalted shelled pistachios,
which, just like the almonds, are gonna end up nicer
if you give 'em a little toast in a 400 degree oven.
And, of course, let 'em cool completely
before adding them to the batter.
From there, it's the same procedure:
mix it all up, form it into a log,
bake it, slice it up, lay it out, bake it again,
flip 'em over, bake 'em again, let 'em cool completely,
and this time, we're gonna dip them in white chocolate,
which, as you can see, I'm pouring into a tall narrow glass,
so as that we might envelop half of our biscotti
in the chocolate.
Now, I'm not even that big of a fan of white chocolate,
but even I can't resist when it's combined
with cranberries and pistachios,
and dipped into coffee, and smothered in sprinkles,
and maybe I just don't like white chocolate.
So let's make a chocolate chocolate orange biscotti.
Same recipe as before,
but we're substituting 50 grams of the flour
with Dutch process cocoa powder.
Then, instead of any stupid nuts or berries,
we're gonna add more chocolate:
120 grams of your favorite baking chocolate,
roughly chopped into chunks.
Add that along with the wet stuff,
and then just to try to keep things a little bit healthy,
we'll add some fruit: the zest of one large orange,
which of course is not gonna make things healthy,
but bring a nice, subtle orange flavor.
Same deal from there:
mix everything up, pat it out, bake, slice, bake.
And there you have it: double chocolate orange biscotti,
which are almost perfect as they are, but we're not done.
Another common topping for biscotti is a thin fondant icing,
which we're gonna make by squeezing the juice of one orange
and adding it a little bit at a time
to two cups of powdered sugar,
until it has a nice, thick but drizzleable consistency.
You can even add a drop or two of orange food coloring
if you really wanna hammer home that this is orange.
Now, your best move is probably
to just Jackson Pollock this all over your cookies,
but after making so many,
I fancied myself a bit of a pastry artist,
which turned out not to be true.
So while these don't look awesome
and it's a little early for Halloween biscotti,
they're really, really delicious.
So there you have it:
three different kinds of very easy to make
and very delicious on their own biscotti.
I even made a super traditional version,
so Italians legally cannot get mad at me.
And while these are perfectly delicious on their own,
they both improve and are improved by coffee,
just like any loving relationship.
Oh, no, Andy.
Do you have tooth sensitivity?
Well, then it's a good thing
that this episode is sponsored by Sensodyne.
If you have sensitive teeth, cold and hot drinks
can unexpectedly trigger painful twinges,
making it hard to enjoy your favorite cup of coffee.
Sensodyne Repair & Protect with Deep Repair is here to help.
It's designed to help repair and relieve
the sensitive areas of your teeth when used twice a day,
so you can enjoy biscotti alongside your favorite iced latte
or warm cappuccino this National Coffee Day.
Life's too short for sensitive teeth.
Use Sensodyne and go back to enjoying iced or hot coffee
without the pain of sensitivity.
Thank you again to Sensodyne for sponsoring today's episode.
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