Gingerbread Biscotti

As much as I enjoy cooking and discovering how to cook new things or making a meal that I know pleases someone I care about, I also love to experiment in the kitchen too. When an experiment fails, I beat myself up about it and I feel terribly guilty for having wasted food, more times than I care to think about I've eaten my mistakes just to keep from throwing the food away. When an experiment turns out well, or, even just turns out, then you can find me doing a happy dance all over the apt. me and Charlie the cat, just dancing with glee.

Yesterday, I experimented with a recipe for biscotti.

Yesterday, we did the happy dance.

Alberto, who has a most excellent website (go see, I'll wait) mentioned yesterday that while doing his morning reading of several food bloggers he noticed that we all seemed to be in sync with one another. There seems to have been a mass coincidence of soup making and blogging about it over the weekend. I shook my head in agreement with Alberto as I read his words, yes! that's happened before and I've noticed it too! I think we do somehow influence each other through our mutual interests in food and cooking and the fact that we keep online journals about it is just terrific, it doesn't surprise me (anymore) that sometimes our cooking paths cross. I came across another cooking coincidence yesterday on Meg's beautifully written and excellent site, she wrote about her experiments with a new biscotti recipe over the weekend. I couldn't have read Meg's account at a better time, as I was about to dive head first into a new recipe for biscotti that I was also kind of sort of making up as I went along. Meg was troubled by the addition of butter that the recipe she was using called for. Not accustomed to using butter in the past when making biscotti, she went ahead and followed the recipe anyway and was disappointed with the dough, which became crumbly and difficult to work with. Meg decided the butter was the culprit. I too have had this happen to me when making biscotti and so after reading Meg's account I went through my archives and discovered that one of the dough's I've had trouble with in the past called for a full cup of butter, no wonder I've never been able to easily work with the dough. With Meg's experience fresh in mind I set out to make my experimental batch of biscotti omitting the butter and seeing what I'd get.

I'm so glad I listened to Meg.

I wanted biscotti, and I wanted gingerbread, but I wanted it to be in one cookie, so after surfing the internet for a while and finding recipes for gingerbread biscotti that didn't quite meet what I had envisioned in my mind, I decided to try and make up my own version following a basic recipe for biscotti and a basic recipe for gingerbread as a guide.

Before starting the dough, I chopped up some dried apricots, dates and walnuts and put them in a bowl. To this I added a few teaspoons of currents which had been soaking in some Grenadian White Rum, and some fresh ginger root that I had minced. I poured about a tablespoon of superfine sugar over the fruit and nuts and added more white rum to cover the mixture. I mixed it all around, covered it and let it macerate for 2 hours at room temperature. Pure White Rum is powerful stuff, it reminds me of moonshine. I brought back a few bottles of Clarkes Court after the last time I was in Grenada visiting family. I've discovered that I don't really enjoy drinking it, even as a mixer it's way too strong for me, but when used in small amounts for cooking it's pretty wonderful stuff, it enhances the flavors of fruits and adds a unique smell and taste to everything. It's nice.

I preheated my oven to 325 degrees and sprayed a cookie sheet with non stick cooking spray.

The dough was pretty easy to make. Into a bowl went 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup tightly packed brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon salt, a pinch of ground black pepper, 1 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves, 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg (Hi Blue! ), 1/4 cup of dark robust molasses, 1 tablespoon of maple syrup, 2 large eggs and 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract. I mixed everything using a wooden spoon until it became too difficult, then I plunged my hands in and squished everything around until all was well incorporated. I turned the dough out onto a floured surface and after squeezing the excess rum out of the fruit and nut mixture, I kneaded it into the dough using enough flour to easily handle the dough and absorb the extra moisture.

I formed the dough into two logs, it was still a bit tacky, and placed the logs on the prepared cookie sheet. This went into the oven for 35 minutes and when an ice pick inserted in the middle came out clean I removed it from the oven, turned the temperature down to 300 degrees and let the logs cool for 20 minutes before slicing them. Slicing them was a pleasure. I used a serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion and there was no crumbling of the dough thanks to Meg's suggestion to not use butter. Three Cheers for Meg please! I couldn't have been happier, this was literally the first time I've sliced biscotti dough with ease and without a mess of crumbs all over the place. Once all the cookies had been sliced I placed them back onto the cookie sheet and back into the oven for 20 minutes, after 20 minutes I removed them, turned them over and placed them back into the oven to dry out the other sides for 20 minutes.

These are one fragrant but hard to bite into tooth-breaking cookie. They are a true biscotti, meant to be eaten the way biscotti is traditionally eaten, dunked into a glass of something, whether it be wine, coffee, milk, or whatever your poison. They are just too hard to eat on their own. (Consider this a warning, these cookies need to be eaten dunked in something first, should you try making them at home, don't say I didn't tell you). Aside from that, these taste really delicious. The dunking brings out the flavors of the spices and the cookie is not really that sweet, the fruit provides the sweetness and the rum adds a nice hint of warmth to the taste and fragrance.

I think I would make these again, but perhaps try to find a way to make them less hard. I wouldn't want to give them away the way they are right now and take the risk of someone trying to eat them without first dunking. With some tweaking I think this could be a successful cookie that I can eventually add to my repertoire. Overall, I'd say this was not a a complete success but also not a complete failure. YaY me!

Written by Deb on December 9, 2003 12:15 AM