Coffee Biscotti - Food Exchange Program

This week, the Food Exchange Program was delayed. Sue was on leave on Monday, and Tuesday was a rather busy day at work for her as there was quite a lot to catch up with. Babe is going through a sad rough bump in her life's journey. She will be recuperating for the next 3 or so weeks. Get well soon Babe. Can't wait for you to get back into the Food Exchange Program.

As the Food Exchange was not going to happen on Monday, I took my time during the weekend to look through some of my cook books. I recently bought this one by Catherine Atkinson called Coffee Cakes and Desserts.


There were so many yummy cakes and desserts that were so tempting but as I had to do whatever it was that I wanted to do on a Monday evening after work, I selected something which was relatively simple. I decided on her Coffee Biscotti recipe. I have never tried doing a biscotti before, hence I read and reread her recipe a few times to make sure I understood it. These days, we cannot afford to make mistakes as mistakes are rather expensive with the increased price of all ingredients (Sue understands this best as we both have thrown out our fair share of failures in the past *sob*).

The recipe and the method have been reproduced below. The aroma from the coffee during the baking was so heavenly. I wonder if the neighbours could smell it. It lingered almost the entire night until morning..... mmmmmm....


Ingredients

25g of roasted coffee beans (i only used 10g of nescafe powder)
115g of blanched almonds
200g of plain flour
1 1/2tsp of baking powder
1/4tsp salt
75g of unsalted butter, cubed
150g of caster sugar
2 eggs beaten
25-30ml strong brewed coffee
1tsp of ground cinnamon for dusting

Method

1. Preheat oven at 180C/350F
2. Put the espresso coffee beans in a single layer on one side of the baking sheet and the almonds on the other side.
3. Roast for 10 mins and leave to cool.
4. Put the coffee beans in the food processor or blender and process until fairly find. (Using instant nescafe powder sure saved me a fair bit of time and probably tasted as yummy. The smell was absolutely heavenly)
5. Tip it out and set it aside. Process the almonds until fine.
6. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl.
7. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
8. Stir in the sugar, ground coffee and almonds
9. Add in the beaten eggs and enough brewed coffee to form a fairly firm dough.
10. Lightly knead for a few seconds until smooth and shape into 2 rolls about 7.5cm in diameter.
11. Placed on a greased baking sheet and dust with cinnamon. Bake for 20 minutes
12. Using a sharp knife, cut the rolls into 4cm slices in diagonal slices.
13. Arrange the slices back onto the baking tray and bake for another 10 minutes or until lightly brown. Cool on a rack.
    

There was a cook's tip at the end of the recipe which read "Store the biscotti in an airtight tin for a day before serving". That explains why Sue is only getting her biscotti this morning :)

Technorati Tags:coffee, biscotti
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator