Cinnamon Spice Biscotti

I really enjoy food blogs, and am constantly bookmarking (on the Internet) or clipping (out of magazines) recipes I want to try someday.  Sometimes I’m good about making them, other times they just sit there, sounding delicious but unmade.  I have several biscotti recipes bookmarked, and it seems like everywhere I’ve seen them, the recipe is accompanied by a note talking about how easy biscotti is to make and how you would have to be a fool to ever buy it when you could make it.  I remembered that this morning, while planning a menu for our Christmas breakfast, so I decided I’d make some.  My mom loves biscotti, and people often like coffee with/after their meals, so it seemed like a nice addition to the menu.  I immediately turned to Budget Bytes, one of my favorite (if not my absolutely favorite) food blogs for a simple version.

I was really nervous when I started making the Cinnamon Spice Biscotti.  It called for things I didn’t have, like brown sugar (I made my own with white sugar and maple syrup since we didn’t have any molasses) and for actions I’m not really familiar with, like creaming butter.  I’ve seen Mike do it, using our Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but I didn’t feel like hauling that heavy thing out.  The butter needed to be soft, but not too soft.  How does one know when the butter is right?  Then, I needed to combine the butter with other wet ingredients, until it had a creamy texture.  But my batter mixture was kind of lumpy when I was done with that step…  I plunged ahead, though, and added my dry ingredients (note: I’m MUCH better at combining dry ingredients).  In the end, I had dough, but I wasn’t sure if it was “a soft dough,” as the recipe stated.

The recipe then called for using dusted hands to form two logs, about 3 inches wide and 14 inches long.  This is where I started to really doubt myself.  First of all, I am terrible at spatial reasoning, so “3 inches wide and 14 inches long” doesn’t mean much to me.  Secondly, I dusted my hands with flour, but I had no idea how much flour to use.  I knew I didn’t want so much that my dough got all floury, but I also know it’s important to use the right amount at first so you don’t overhandle the dough, which is bad.  I made my best guess, stuck my hands in my bowl, and a profanity that starts with the letter “F” immediately came to mind.

The dough was REALLY sticky.  Really, really sticky.  I decided I’d focus less at first on the dimensions of my logs and more on making two evenly-sized balls of dough.  I’d gotten some flour on the counter when I was combining my dry ingredients, so I plopped a handful of dough onto the granite, then scooped another handful out into another ball.  Then I was stuck-literally!  The dough was sticking to my hands and I couldn’t get any more of it to drop onto my dough balls.  And my hands were covered in dough, so it’s not like I could just dip them into the flour container to flour them some more.  I ended up scraping as much dough as I could off my hands with a rubber spatula, then washing my hands, then grabbing a spoon and dumping some flour onto my hands, then going back at the dough.  That actually worked pretty nicely, though I mourned the amount of dough I washed off my hands.  I re-floured until I had two dough balls, then dropped the dough on my parchment paper-lined baking sheet.

I found myself with two sad trails of dough.  At that point I decided I’d gone this far, I’d just keep muddling through the recipe and if I needed to throw it out, I would.  I also mentally shook my fist at the Internet and all the bloggers who claimed biscotti is soooooooo easy to make.  Lying Internet!

Fine.  I put some more flour on my hands and shaped the dough into long rectangles.  (Side note: I have no idea how the lady behind Budget Bytes manages to take pictures while she’s making the recipes, because my workspace and I were a total mess.)  It didn’t look exactly like the picture, but it got at the general idea.  I popped the tray into the over, muttered to Mike about Internet hoaxes (sort of like people saying pregnancy is nine months.  It’s 10 months, people!), and, a few minutes later, started salivating at the delicious smell coming out of my oven.

I turned the light on in the oven and peered at my biscotti.  It looked… well, like it might be good.  Once the timer went off and it was time to gently cut the loaves into pieces and sprinkle them with a cinnamon sugar mix, I knew I- like my biscotti- was golden.  Back into the oven for five more minutes, then flipped it over, sprinkled more goodness on, back for five more minutes, then out to cool.  Meanwhile, I posted a link to the recipe on Facebook and started dreaming about all the other varieties I could make (with chocolate chips and nuts!  Dipped in melted chocolate!  with dried fruit!).

Once the biscotti cooled, I put it in a bag and it’s now ready to make its debut at tomorrow morning’s breakfast.  Now that I’ve gone through the process once, I can honestly say it really is easy to make… so long as you amply flour your hands!