It was one of those days....I had the munchies (work induced) and I needed something sweet and carb like, but there was nothing that was fitting that description in my cabinet. I could walk to the store but I know how that always turns out! I buy Oreos (random but did you know these little favorites are 100 years old!) or Fig Newtons (these are also over 100 years old!) and then consume nearly the whole box and while I am not one to worry about calories - eating that many cookies is never a good idea. I usually never buy cookies in the store and I tend not to eat a whole lot of sugar or processed foods so while I may satiate my craving I don't feel very well later and sets off another wave of food cravings as my body, that is now hopped up on sugar, tries to handle the situation. So, while making the decision to bake when I should be working usually leads me to waste and hour getting up and down from my desk and walking in to the kitchen in the end I usually yield and bake something. I decided to cut the wasted hour out of the equation and just bake some biscotti. I would be happier at the end, I would not have wasted the hour, I would have something to blog and would have something to have with afternoon coffee while I worked.
Now what kind of biscotti should I bake. Well, I still had pistachios from an impulse buy one night when ESFSW and I were at Whole Foods buying fish for dinner and 1 lb of pistachios were on sale for a ridiculously low price! And I still had Craisens® which are now ancient (embarrassed to say probably 2 to 3 years old!) and really only good for baking. I think I should just pair these classics together (nothing original or crazy here!)
The pistachios were sadly still in their little shells so I did have to take the time to shell them. But, that also gave me permission though to snack on a few. I did this task while reading so I made use of my time.
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| Cranberry and Pistachio a classic! |
I am not an expert biscotti maker at all. One of my favorite kinds is actually a dried cherry and pistachio recipe that I got from a good friend. So I relied on the interweb to give me a recipe. Simple search and glance over of the results and I decided that the recipe from All Recipes looked the simplest and I had all the ingredients!
You can find the recipe on their site by clicking here: Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti. I will also re-write it below all my pictures!
The recipe used Olive Oil instead of butter. So the creaming the fat and sugar together yielded a very different product that creamed butter and sugar. In some ways it was much easier than creaming butter since olive oil is a liquid at room temp. You probably don't need a mixer, although these babies always help make baking easier! I can't wait for the day I have one of my own! This one is my roommates.
Next you need 2 eggs (the other one is already in the mixer), vanilla and almond extract. I didn't not have almond extract so I used orange. Citrus pairs well with both cranberries and pistachio so I figured it would be terrible if my biscotti had an orange flavor.
After you beat in the egg and the extracts add the flour and other dry ingredients and mix well!
Stir in dried cranberries and pistachios by hand. I chopped the pistachios up a bit before hand so that they weren't such large chunks. It also means there will be more pistachio spread throughout!
Form the dough in to two logs and place on a greased cookie sheet (or use a baking mat like I did!). The dough is a little sticky. If you hands are wet the dough won't stick as much. If you find it impossible to work with you can also refrigerate the dough and then form in into logs when it is cold. Need at least an hour in the fridge or 30 minutes in the freezer.
After you bake the logs, you then remove them from the oven and carefully (they are hot) with a sharp knife cut the logs into sections. Spread out the cross sections on the cookie sheet and return them to the oven. This step dries the biscotti out.
All done! They just need to cool before I can start snacking! So while I waited for them to cool I made some coffee!
Happy Baking and Noshing!
Recipe from All Recipes (slightly modified):
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp orange extract
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 1/2 cup chopped pistachios
Cream olive oil and sugar together. Add eggs, vanilla and orange extract. Beat well. Add dry ingredients (not fruit and nuts) and mix until incorporated. Stir in nuts and dried cranberries by hand. Shape dough into two logs and place on a greased. Bake in pre-heated oven at 375 F for 35 minutes. Remove from oven cut logs into 1 inch thick sections. Bake again for another 10 to 15 minutes (until dry).
Happy Baking!
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