{TWD} Rustic Almond Biscotti, plain and fancy

{This tiny mille fleur cup and plate were owned by my "maiden" Aunt Mid (Mildred). My cousin recently mailed them to me along with some lovely linens that were my grandmother's}

Finally I get to write a short-and-sweet post for Tuesdays With Dorie! Making the Lenox Almond Biscotti (chosen this week by Gretchen of Canela & Comino) was a straightforward and uneventful experience. No stovetop molten sugar was involved, thankfully!

I often bake the TWD challenges very early, usually before the helpful P&Q is posted. Since I was out of town last week, I baked them Sunday afternoon, and had the benefit of all the wonderful feedback and suggestions. Based on what I read, I refrigerated the dough so that the logs would not spread quite so much as they baked.

I knew that the biscotti would be a bit grainy from the cornmeal, so I decided to emphasize that and make mine rustic. I used ground almonds, part whole wheat flour, and a bit of wheat germ.

cook's notes

I followed Dorie's recipe with the following minor adjustments:
- Used half AP flour and half King Arthur White Whole Wheat flour
- Reduced the cornmeal to 1/4 cup
- Omitted the sliced almonds and used 3/4 c. ground almonds (with a food processor, it's really really easy to make almond meal)
- Threw in a palm-full of wheat germ
- Added 1 tsp grapefruit zest with the wet ingredients
- Used 1/2 cup Eggbeaters instead of 2 eggs

Further notes:
- I stirred chopped sour cherries into half of the dough, leaving the other half plain.
- The dough was very sticky, but I don't know how much my alterations changed the texture.
- I formed skinny logs approximately 14" long
- I chilled logs for 1/2 hour on their baking sheet before popping them into the oven.
- My oven was set at 335 degrees on "convect bake"
- The biscotti were springy in about 18 minutes
- Once they cooled and were cut (3/4"wide), there were 29 biscotti. They were nicely domed, around 3 to 4 inches long
- The second bake was at 325 degrees, again convect, for another 18-ish minutes.
- I dipped the ends of a few of each flavor into melted Callebaut bittersweet chocolate. In the end there were 4 flavor variations (plain, plain with chocolate, cherry, cherry with chocolate).

The Verdict:
These were lovely biscotti. My husband gave the recipe a "10". His preference was the plain ones - although he did like the cherry. He likes basic flavors, well executed (vanilla ice cream is his favorite).

I'm not the world's biggest biscotti fan, but I did enjoy these, especially the cherry ones. They had a definite sandy texture from the cornmeal, ground almonds, whole wheat flour and wheat germ. And even so, these biscotti retained a certain delicacy of flavor. Their AQ (almond quotient) was very high- from the 1.5 tsp of almond extract and the 3/4 cup of ground almonds - and it was very good. I think the grapefruit zest added a freshness. The smell alone was worth the trouble of making these (not so troublesome, actually)!

The chocolate-dipped ones were fine but I preferred them naked. The biscotti would also have looked pretty with some sliced almonds on the tops. They made a good accompaniment to a cup of tea - or coffee. I like them dry, along side the tea, rather than dunked. They are pretty porous and dissolved pretty fast when dunked.

I plan to bring them to book group on Thursday.

You can find the biscotti recipe on pages 141-143 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours or on Gretchen's post.

Next week's TWD challenge = Pumpkin Muffins, page 13. I'm psyched; I love, love, love pumpkin baked goods.