I am a fourth generation Italian living in America but we have done a pretty good job of holding on to our Italian traditions after so many years in America. Bagna Cauda, Raviolis and Biscotti seem to be the recipes we have clung to. You can read my past posts on Bagna Cauda (a hot Fondue made of butter, garlic and anchovies, typical of the North of Italy) and our family tradition of making homemade Beef and Spinach Raviolis by clicking the links.
Today I am happy to share with you my grandmothers recipe for Biscotti. Now that I live in Italy, I can see that “Biscotti” is just the general word for “Cookies” but to us, Biscotti only means one thing: Grandmas Biscotti. In America we like to “improve” on everything by making it bigger and better! The same is true for this recipe. Originally it was just a small simple dry cookie good for dipping into a cup of coffee in the morning. Now it a thick wedge drizzled in chocolate.
My grandmas original recipe said “roll out like a gnocchi”. Isn’t that so Italian of her? Assuming everyone knows how to roll out a gnocchi! Well, in case you don’t know how to make a gnocchi, it means you take a ball of dough in your hand about the size of a golf ball then start to roll it in between your two flatten hands like you are making a snake, just like in kindergarten when you played with play-dough…It should be a snake the thickness of a finger.
I will include a picture of grandma’s recipe, I just love looking at it, remembering how diligent she was to type out her recipes on the type-writer. My grandma was also a song writer, I can still remember her at her typewriter typing out a song or a recipe. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I do.
I also hope you enjoy making this recipe, I have cut in in half for your first try, my grandma’s original recipe made a very big batch and I always enjoyed wrapping the Biscotti up in cellophane and giving them to my friends as gifts along with a new coffee mug. Who wouldn’t want such a gift?
These Biscotti last for months in a dry container, if you can keep them around that long!
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon Amaretto
- 3 cups flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 cup walnuts chopped
- White or semi sweet chocolate chips for melting
Instructions:
- Cream together butter, sugar, eggs and amaretto
- Add dry ingredients and mix with butter mixture, stirring in the milk as you go, add walnuts
- Rub butter on baking sheet, flour your hands and form a loaf 6 inches wide the length of the pan. Pat down with floured hands until it is 1/2 inch thick ( the dough s very sticky, you should use a spoon to spoon it onto the baking sheet, then you must use floured hands to pat it down. I usually flick some flour on the dough before I touch it)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- bake for 25 minutes, remove from oven, reduce heat to 300, allow the loaf to slightly cool, then slice into wedges 1 inch thick. Turn the wedges on their side then bake again, allowing the cookies to get hardened and dry.
- when the Biscotti are completely cooled you can drizzle them with chocolate. I do this using a pastry bag and tip, if you don’t have one, you can use a sturdy ziplock bag and spoon the melted chocolate into the bag, then snip the corner off of the bag, just a small corner, the size of a ball point pin tip. Or if all of that seems like too much work, you can just frost each cookie with a thin layer of chocolate and allow it to cool.
