That title is a mouth full. It’s what happens when you make clean out your pantry biscotti. I was pretty smug when I created this recipe with leftover ingredients, except the rosemary was not leftover.
Like a stalker, my planter of fresh rosemary just won’t give up this winter. We’ve had two snow storms this past month, one being a monster. Regardless, every time I step outside on my NYC terrace, the plant still stands up fresh looking at me all perky-like saying, “Pick me! Use me!” I suppose I should be grateful but sometimes I want to slap it.
Anyway, I was all smug about my creation until I made a classic food blogging rookie mistake. After toasting the pine nuts to add to the biscotti batter, I added them all, not thinking to save a tablespoon or two for styling when photographing the biscotti.
Almost six years of food blogging and I am still a dummy. Oy.
I’m blaming it on the fact I worked all weekend producing a commercial while trying to create food blog posts at the same time. And I used to be such a multi-tasker.
While I was bemoaning my lack of toasted pine nuts and even contemplating a market run to buy some more, there was that annoying rosemary again, all Eve Harrington-like, once more saying, “Pick me! Use me!”
oh-KAY already, so I resisted the store trip and Miss Rose Mary got to co-star on the biscotti plate for the photo session. She was so ready for her close-up.
These are really lovely, unusual and tasty biscotti. Many biscotti recipes are so good by themselves, dipping them in chocolate is optional. I can vouch these are too, but the extra layer of chocolate really enhances the flavor.
I made two sizes, regular and a mini version, since I was bringing them to the set as finger food for the talent and crew. The mini version was easy. After the first bake, in the cutting stage, cut the log in half lengthwise, then slice the biscotti as normal for the second bake.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups AP flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter
- 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon dark rum
- 3/4 cup toasted pine nuts (instructions below)
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary needles
- 3/4 cup semi sweet mini chocolate chips/or chopped regular sized chocolate chips
Directions:
- Roughly chop the pine nuts and place them in a naked frying pan. Toast the nuts over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Watch them carefully, it’s easy to burn them. When the pine nuts are lightly toasted, remove them from the heat and set aside.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk together the flour and baking powder and set aside.
- In the bowl of a mixer beat butter and brown sugar until combined.
- Add eggs, vanilla extract and dark rum.
- Add flour mixture until throughly combined.
- Tun mixer on low and add pine nuts, chocolate chips and rosemary needles until evenly mixed in.
- Divide the dough in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough with your hands on one side (lengthwise) of the baking sheet into a long log about 3 inches wide. Pat the top down to make it flat.
- Repeat with the other half making sure there is at least 2 inches between the logs.
- Bake for about 20-25 minutes until the logs turn golden brown.
- Turn oven down to 250 degrees, remove the baking from oven and let the biscotti loaves stand about 10 minutes.
- Slice each log into 1 inch pieces (se instruction above for creating the mini-sized version). Lay them on their sides and return to oven for 10 minutes.
- When the biscotti are completely dry, remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to let cool completely.
For the Chocolate Dipped Version:
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup chopped semi sweet chocolate or semi sweet chocolate chips
- Vegetable shortening, if needed
Directions:
- Place a sheet of baking paper under a wire rack or place the wire rack on the used parchment lined baking sheet
- Put chocolate in a shallow heat proof bowl and melt in microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring in between until chocolate is totally melted. Alternately, place the chocolate in a double boiler over medium heat and melt.If the chocolate is too thick, add vegetable shortening, a dab at a time and blend. It will thin out the chocolate and make it easier for dipping the biscotti.
- Dip the bottoms of the biscotti into the melted chocolate.
- Lay biscotti on it’s side on the wire rack. If the spaces in the rack are big enough to stand the biscotti upside down, do so with the chocolate dipped side up.
- When chocolate has hardened, remove from rack, plate and serve.
