12 Days of Cookies - Day 9 - Holiday Biscotti

Yay!  It's nice to have a Saturday off after working the past couple.  Finally, I have a chance to get caught up on Christmas decorating and baking.  The girls and I put some more ornaments on the tree before breakfast this morning. =)  (Still more to do this evening.)  And I made my selection for Day 9 of the 12 Days of Cookies.  This Holiday Biscotti with Cranberries and Pistachios has been on my list from the beginning.  It wasn't even that hard to make--what slowed me down was the need to shell the pistachios.  I wish I'd thought to check at Central Market to see if they had any already shelled.  At least Brianna helped me with a few of them.  As picky as she is about a lot of things, she absolutely loves pistachios.  I'm sure she'll help me eat the leftovers.

I mostly followed the recipe as written.  I left out the aniseed because I really dislike all things licorice.  And a la Dorie, I rubbed the lemon zest into the sugar so it was evenly dispersed, then creamed the lemon sugar with the butter.  Then it was just a matter of mixing in the eggs (one at a time), then mixing in the dry ingredients.  I stirred the cranberries and pistachios in by hand.  I formed the dough into two long, thin logs on a parchment-lined baking sheet--the dough was surprisingly easy to work with.  I put the sheet in my oven (preheated to 325 degrees F) and baked the logs for about 25 minutes.  When I took the sheet out of the oven, I was surprised that the dough hadn't spread as much as I'm used to with biscotti.  That's when I realized that I'd added too much flour (2 1/2 cups rather than 2 1/4).

I decided that an extra ounce of flour wouldn't cause a complete disaster, and proceeded with cutting the logs into pieces.  I cut on the diagonal so I'd get longer pieces.  Rather than laying the biscotti pieces on their sides on two sheets, I left them standing up and was able to fit them on one sheet.  I had to bake them a bit longer (about 25 minutes) for them to start to brown, but it was worth it since I didn't have to mess with turning the pieces over.  Once the biscotti had cooled, I coated one end of each piece with dark chocolate.  (I took a poll, and Brianna and Gillian both voted for dark instead of white chocolate.)

The verdict?  Tasty!  I definitely like the dark chocolate much more than I would have liked white chocolate.  I think the dark goes nicely with both the cranberries and pistachios.  The plain biscotti also has a distinct but pleasant flavor of lemon that goes nicely with the other ingredients.  I'm going to take these to an potluck tomorrow (our Italian genealogy friends); I'll have to report back later on what they think.

If you'd like to give these a try, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up recently!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project