I was chatting with Dan the other day when out of the blue he asked, "Are you baking tonight?". Talk about a loaded question, haha. I took this as an opportunity to point out that he is now officially spoiled. He went on to say that he was just asking because while he was having his afternoon coffee he was bummed that he didn't have a "Patricia-baked-good" to go with it. Aw... sweet. But spoiled. He wasn't craving anything specifically, just some kind of a fresh baked good. After an hour of pondering he decided he wanted "sausage bread". Now, sausage bread (like this one from Bodacious Girl) is on my list of things to make someday. Just not today. And since it wasn't an urgent sausage bread emergency, I didn't feel bad telling Dan: "no sausage bread for you". (And just between you and me, I wasn't sure I had the patience for yeast dough). But I did take his original request for a fresh baked good into consideration.
The next day I decided to make biscotti. But not the same chocolate biscotti as before. We both love that chocolate biscotti... chewy and sweet and salty and just good. But I wanted to try something new. So once again I turned to Dorie Greenspan and read the Lenox biscotti recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours. I read through the Playing Around section. Straight-up almond sounded okay, but I really wanted to do something different. I had a lime. Hmm. Lime... coconut? Doh, I didn't have coconut. And then I spied an almost dead bag of white chocolate chips.
So I took the Lenox recipe and added lime zest, reduced the almonds, and added some white chocolate chips. The result was good. I feel like something in the flavor could be enhanced though. Maybe more lime zest? Or a different flavor extract than almond? Don't get me wrong. These were good just as they were. And crunchy. Not hard, but crunchy. The addictive kind of crunchy. But I set out to make "lime" and got only a hint of lime. I do think coconut would be a nice compliment to the lime, maybe instead of the almonds. I'll let you know if I try it again, but in the meantime these biscotti will make you happy when you are craving a little something to go with your afternoon coffee (or tea).
Click here for recipe >>
