Pre-Christmas baking

Christmas is here!!

Started some Christmas baking with English scones and some biscotti. Actually the reason for the scones is that the mini jams are just too cute and very festive. :)

Biscotti is kind of a must and since the recipient of this present mentioned biscotti when I mentioned Christmas present, here's the biscotti. Something more Christmasy so instead of my usual almond chocolate biscotti, I made this with the green and red colour - almond, pistachio, cranberries and raisins. Taster said it's not as crunchy but nice. I supposed the fruits made certain part more moist, I was also being careful not to over bake it in case it got too hard.

Merry Christmas in advance. :)

Almond Chocolate Biscotti - thin slices

Wai En is a big fan of biscotti. He told me the other day that he can finished a whole packet he usually buy from Dome Cafe in one day and I didn't believe him until today.

Made a 250gm batch for him and it was finished within a few minutes. That was also because he was offering the whole office.

He wanted thin slices and reduced sugar. This was the best thin cut I can do unless I have a machine. It's not easy slicing these biscuits with the almonds in them. ;)

Pistachio and Cranberry Biscotti

Came across this recipe in the BBC Good Food magazine and planned to bake this for my Christmas present.


I just love the colour of these biscotti. Green from the pistachios, red from the cranberries. Very christmasy. Recipe also includes raisins and almond.

This is sort of an experiment since I have no time to perfect it yet. The handling of the dough can be improved, the size and baking time needs to be improved too. But overall, I love the taste, sis had quite a few pieces so I'm sure it's quite acceptable.



Wishing you a very blessed Christmas. Have a great holiday!

Chocolate Almond Biscotti

I've tried baking a chocolate base biscotti the last time, with pecan and chocolate chips (I can't seem to be able to forgo chocolate chips), but it was not good, leave alone a very troublesome baking method.

For curiosity sake, I want to try baking a chocolate base biscotti one last time (at least until I find a recipe that is so convincing.

Anyways, I thought this is quite a believable recipe and don't seem to be that complicated. Actually, compared with my confirmed recipe, this seems less troublesome since no electric mixer is required. And so I thought wrong... this recipe required kneading the dough and it was a very though dough! Didn't expect that type of consistency.

There was also one tricky instruction - the ingredient list says 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk. The method says "... add almond, and the eggs....". EGGS? The 2 eggs, or the 2 eggs AND the yolk? At the end of the recipe, it says "brush the dough with egg yolk".

So I guess just the 2 eggs without the yolk. But after kneading for a while, I realize that some of the flour couldn't be mixed together, so I added the egg yolk as well, and brush the dough with another egg yolk before baking.

Whatever do we want to brush egg yolk? I actually don't like the outcome of the egg wash. It's rather erm... yellow. See...


I didn't think the biscotti looked "pretty" with the egg yolk wash even after slicing them. One thing about slicing biscotti - if you slice them when they are just baked, it's easy since the dough is still soft, but since it's soft, the biscotti will crumble. Leaving the biscotti for about 5 minutes makes slicing a bit more difficult but you will find that the biscuit slices are more intact.

Sliced biscotti ready for second bake. If you want really crispy slices, cut them as think as possible and bake for a longer time (the dryer the crispier), but I also discovered (and according to feedback) that it will be a bit hard. Something like crispy equals hard. MFG said he likes it crispy, but the parents finds it a bit hard. A baking time of 10 to 15 minutes maximum would be just nice for the second baking.