Cookie-baking and other holiday randomness

[thegrrrl2002]

I just finished baking three batches of biscotti--almond, chocolate chocolate chip, and chai tea biscotti. The chai tea biscotti are awesome. This is the first time I made them and I was quite pleased by the results. Next up will be cinnamon biscotti, walnut biscotti, and gingerbread biscotti. And oh, yes I do want to try these cappuccino biscotti. Then I have to hide them all (from myself and my husband) until it's time to head out and visit the family for the holidays.

I've been making biscotti for the holidays for a few years now. All the recipes I've used are ones I've found on-line, which makes me realize we don't have much in the way of a family tradition for baking. My mother makes cheesecake or creampuffs for holiday desserts, and I don't get along well with dairy (not lactose intolerance, but allergies, I suspect) so I tend to avoid those. My sisters don't bake much at all (we all like to focus on the serious business of COOKING, heh.) I'm not very fond of baking either, I'm far too willy nilly for it to always work but for some reason I like making biscotti. Sawing up the little loaves of cookie amuses me, I guess.

My italian grandmother used to bake these cookie-like objects known as knots, which were rock-hard and not very sweet. They struck fear into the heart of all children (I guess we didn't have any coffee to dunk them in?). My mother modified the recipe to use cream cheese, which softens them up a bit, but by then the damage was done. I just don't like them.

So I'm starting to think of the biscotti as self-defense against the cream cheese knots and cream puffs and cheesecake I will be faced with over Christmas.

Anyone else have tales of holiday treats that are anything but? :D

Now I must go and drizzle melted chocolate over my almond biscotti.

And in conclusion:


Alex, are you hugging Scotty or dancing with him?

Comments

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

OMG yes. I keep seeing recipes that call for crushed candy canes and all I can think is NO. The texture is all wrong, sharp and crunchy, as you said. It's such a good flavor with chocolate, but I just can't do it!

The gif is from the blooper reel, although the hug was in the penultimate ep from S1. We only saw the hug from the shoulders up in the ep, it was sweet of them to give us the whole hug on the gag reel. :D