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Photo: nerdling / Flickr

This recipe for biscotti biscuits should yield about 30 slices. The biscuits are rich in fruit and nuts like dried cranberries, dried apricots, medjool dates, pistachio nuts, blanched almonds and hazelnuts. Other ingredients include cake flour, castor sugar, baking powder, eggs and the zest of a lemon. Biscotti means ‘baked twice’ in Italian which is appropriate because these biscuits are baked twice. Serve the biscuits with tea, coffee or dessert. Use sweetened dried strawberries or other dried fruits instead, should you wish.

Ingredients

These biscotti require the following ingredients: 250 grams of plain cake flour, 250 grams of caster sugar, 1 ½ level teaspoons of fresh baking powder and 3 medium eggs (lightly beaten and at room temperature).

You will also need the following fruit and nuts: 80 grams of pistachio nuts (shelled), 50 grams of whole almonds (blanched), 50 grams of hazelnuts (shelled) 50 grams of dried cranberries (chopped), 100 grams of apricots (chopped), 50 grams of medjool dates (pitted and chopped) and the zest of a lemon.

Prepare the dough

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a baking tray with baking parchment. Place the sugar into a bowl and then sift in the flour and baking powder. Mix together and then add half of the egg mixture before mixing again.

Add half of what’s left of the egg mixture and mix. Add the last of the egg mixture a little at a time until such time as the dough takes shape. The mixture shouldn’t be too wet so leave out some of the egg if necessary.

Incorporate the fruit, nuts and zest and then divide the dough into six sausage roll shapes. These should be three centimetres in diameter. Position the dough rolls about 6 cm apart on the prepared tray and then flatten them a little.

Bake

Place the tray into the oven and bake the biscotti for 25 minutes until they are golden brown in colour. Remove the tray from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes until they have firmed up. Cut the biscotti into 5 millimetre thick slices with a serrated knife.

Lay out the biscotti slices onto baking trays and bake for a further eight minutes before turning them over and baking for another 12 minutes. When they are a light golden colour, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool on some wire racks. Serve or store in an airtight container.

James Martin’s recommendation

This biscotti recipe is inspired by James Martin who advises serving it with limoncello. This can be made by warming 20 cl of vodka in a pot with 200 grams of castor sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved but don’t allow the mixture to come to a boil. Take the pot off the stove and add the juice and zest of 8 lemons. Add 50 cl of vodka, stir and freeze. The limoncello can then be served in shot glasses with some biscotti biscuits.

Tags: baking