Biscotti are a famous Italian cookie, often consumed for breakfast, and are never a disappointment. They contain the perfect amount of sweetness and crunch while remaining a light dessert.
Biscotti, while often categorized as a cookie, takes the form of a sweet bread that is often paired with coffee. It is twice-baked and contains a thick crunch.
This week, the Indiana Daily Student will be featuring traditional Italian recipes in the Wednesday edition of the paper. Today, a biscotti recipe is being shared as a precursor to those amazing recipes to come.
This is my family’s dear, safely guarded recipe for biscotti. I’m not kidding. My grandmother used to make them for my mother growing up, and my mother used to make them for me.
As a little girl, I remember the women in my family surrounding a table with glasses of coffee and biscotti. They would discuss this and that and allow the kids to snatch a biscotti here and there.
When someone took a bite of one, there was a rare moment of silence.
While there may be more to life than food, Italians would disagree, as it complements the human condition with delicious recipes. Maybe the emotion is a little cheesy, but to deny it in the Italian culture would just be wrong. Food surrounds everything.
We share acceptance through food, as you often cannot enter the home of an Italian mother without being offered a meal or a snack that will actually turn out to be a meal. Reject it at your own risk, though — she likely won’t let you reject the food.
We share happiness through food, as you often cannot withhold a smile sitting around a table of family that are all very animated characters.
We combat sadness through food, as funerals are often filled with family members forcing the whole family to eat dinner and honor that person while laughing through a meal.
But most importantly, we share love through food. No matter the mood or emotion, Italians can show you they love you through something warm, or sweet, or hearty, and just letting you talk and laugh and cry and smile through a meal.
There’s a reason it always tastes different from your grandmother’s kitchen.
Here’s what you’ll need:
3 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs
3 teaspoons of almond extract or 3/4 cup chopped almonds
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (or one vanilla teaspoon and one anise teaspoon)
½ cup of oil
1 teaspoon of baking powder
Here’s what you’ll do:
1. Beat the eggs in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add the flour, sugar, extracts, baking powder and oil to the eggs. Mix well.
3. Lightly flour a cutting board. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead it on the cutting board for 1 minute.
4. Divide the dough in half. Shape it into two round loaves about 1-inch tall.
5. Bake the loaves on a baking sheet at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. The loaves should be lightly brown on top when being removed and firm and crunchy to touch.
6. When the loaves are removed from the oven, slice the loaves into 1-inch slivers at an angle.
7. Place the slices back on the baking sheet and bake until browned, about 5 minutes.
8. When serving, drizzle the biscotti with any type of chocolate or serve with coffee or espresso.
allmwagn@indiana.edu
