Grandma Zaccari's Biscotti

Cookie Day 1

Grandma Zaccari's Biscotti

I'm not a baker. I will bake birthday cakes and cupcakes (from a box) for my kids birthdays because I love them. I have a tub of cookie dough in the freezer that I bought at the school fund raiser two years ago that I haven't used because it seems like too much work. Now my friends want me to bake a cookie from scratch every fourth day?? Why did I agree to this? That's exactly what I asked myself all day today. Finally around 9:30 p.m. I dragged my butt to the kitchen because I love my friends and with me it's "All About the Friends." (That's Angie's tag line so I had to slip it in here!). Also, I figured that quicker we got this whole thing in motion, the quicker it would be over.

After the book signing party yesterday, I drove Danielle B. home and went straight to Kroger's to buy Anise oil, the only ingredient that I didn't already have in my pantry that I needed for the biscotti. I'm glad I did because if I would have had to run to Kroger at 9:30 p.m. on a Sunday night...let's just say that I'm glad I bought it yesterday.

What can I tell you about my experience? I think I need to start working out my arms because mixing 6 cups of flour into that batter by hand sure got tiresome. I don't know if I was supposed to mix by hand but when I tried to use my electric mixer, flour dust went flying everywhere. If there's one thing I don't like more than baking, it's cleaning! At the demonstration, Sharon said that the batter would be sticky and she was right. Her tip on getting your hands wet really did work. I didn't use a ruler or a grid to measure out the exact size of my loaves, but they all looked about the same. I fit two loaves on a stone and put the other two loaves on a silicone pad on my metal baking sheet just so I could stick them into the oven at the same time (to move the process along.) Even though Sharon recommends the baking stone for a more even cook, I found that the biscotti stuck to it when it was baked. It absolutely did not stick to the silicone sheet.

Do the cookies look like Sharon's picture? Well, no because I didn't brush them with egg whites and put sprinkles on them. I'm not going to lie, I stuck them in the oven before I read to the bottom of the paragraph that said, "brush with egg whites and sprinkle on candies." By then the loaves were already in the oven for 2 minutes and I figured that the important thing is for them to TASTE good, not look good. Also, I noticed 'after the fact' that the recipe called for blanced almonds. How do you blanch almonds? I wonder if Sharon would be able to tell that my almonds are not blanched. Oh well! The biscotti are baked and my husband tried one and loved it. And, honestly, it wasn't as much work as I thought it would be.

The cookies are bagged and ready to be delivered to my friends tomorrow!

shelly