Pre Christmas Baking - Chocolate Biscotti!

Happy Friday! I'm back in the kitchen again. Still working out the best places to put things and trying to figure out which storage bin holds which items, but all in all it's coming together.

Today the gadgets I've used are a silpat mat, Cuisinart hand mixer, Cuisinart mini food processor, Cuisinart cooling rack, Victorinox bread knife.

Being that it is the holiday season, I thought I'd prepare Chocolate Espresso Biscotti.  Not to worry, this is from the old Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook.  I didn't follow it exactly, but will give you my spin on it.

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup slivered almonds (I used whole and chopped them in the mini food processor)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 Tbsp ground coffee fresh from your canister (I used very finely ground espresso)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
3 Tbsp strong brewed coffee

My method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Spray an approx. 11" x 14" cookie sheet, or line with a silpat mat
3.   Combine flour, cocoa, ground coffee, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
Use an electric mixer to blend ingredients.
4. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, eggs, brewed coffee and vanilla.
Add the sugar mixture gradually to the flour mixture, beat on low speed until well combined. The dough will be fairly dry.  Use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to combine any of the mixture that hasn't blended into the dough.  Mix in the almonds.
5.  Put dough on the cookie sheet, form it into an approx. 5 x 9 inch log.
6.  Bake until firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, approximately 30 - 35 minutes.  Transfer the log onto a cooling rack and let cool 10 minutes.  Put the log onto a cutting board, and with a serrated knife, cut the log crosswise into approx. 1/2 inch slices.
7. Arrange sideways back onto the cookie sheet, bake an additional 12 minutes at 300 degrees, turn at 6 minutes so both sides of the cookie get toasted.
Transfer to wire cookie rack.  They will crisp as they cool.
Makes 15 large biscotti.
WW uses the same recipe, they just divide the dough into two logs, cook them for 20 - 25 minutes and their recipe makes 42 biscotti. With an old point recipe value of 1.
54 calories, 1 g Fat, 0 g Sat Fat, 0 g Trans Fat, 10 mg Col, 35 mg Sod, 10 g Carb, 1 g Fib, 1 g Prot, 11 mg Calc.


In with the gadgets, I also posted a Delonghi espresso machine. It's appears to be a bit bigger than the one in my photos, and has good Amazon ratings.