Biscotti is one of my favorite cookies, especially as the season of gift giving begins. It’s sturdy, stores well and can be made at least a week before delivery (maybe two!). I’m always looking for ways to turn basic biscotti into something special—not that basic biscotti isn’t special on its own. But you know what I mean…something to surprise and elevate.
So this notion of taking a classic ice cream flavor—Rocky Road—and flipping it into a biscotti cookie was quite appealing. Since I was not in the mood to make homemade marshmallow and don’t buy commercial, I settled on a marshmallow-flavored glaze, which works quite well, I think.
After all, biscotti is a perfect partner to ice cream. And as autumn takes hold, this cookie is just the thing for filling the pumpkin pails of trick-or-treaters, serving with after-dinner coffees at Thanksgiving and loading onto the Christmas cookie tray. Of course, it is the go-to cookie for mailing, as well.
One note: this particular recipe is heavy on eggs and will produce a really sticky, wet dough. Be brave. Just lightly flour your work board, line your cookie sheet with parchment paper and be extra careful lifting your logs from the work board to the cookie sheet. All will be fine…and sweet…and chocolatey…and crunchy…yeah.
So let’s get baking!
Ingredients
- Two cups all-purpose flour
- One cup evaporated cane juice
- One-half teaspoon baking powder
- Scant quarter-teaspoon fine sea salt
- One teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Four large eggs, one reserved for wash
- Two large egg yolks
- One teaspoon vanilla
- One cup salted, roasted cashews, roughly chopped
- One cup large-size chocolate chips (I like Mega Chunks from Enjoy Life.)
- One cup sifted powdered sugar
- One teaspoon vanilla
- Three to four tablespoons heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, fine sea salt and cinnamon.
- In a medium bowl, beat three whole eggs and the two egg yolks until thoroughly combined and frothy. Beat in the teaspoon of vanilla.
- Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the egg mixture. Toss from edges to center with a fork, as you would for pastry dough. Once the liquid is incorporated into the flour mixture, knead the dough with your hands until it all comes together and can hold a smooth shape.
- Add in the chopped cashews and chocolate chips. Work them quickly into the dough.
- Transfer the dough to your lightly floured work surface. Divide the dough in half and form each half into about a 12-inch log. Doesn’t have to be perfect, but it will help the cookies bake evenly if the thickness is fairly consistent all along the logs. Do not fret if cashews and chocolate chips try to escape the dough; just press them back in.
- Finish the logs by beating the last whole egg with a fork and brushing the logs all over with the beaten egg.
- Carefully transfer the dough logs to a large, rimless baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake 35 minutes. The logs should have puffed a bit and turned golden brown.
- Remove from the oven. Turn the oven temperature down to 325 degrees. Using an oven mitt or potholder, carefully hold the cookie log and cut on the diagonal into one-inch slices. Once both logs are cut, turn the cookies on their sides and return to the oven for 10 minutes.
- Remove and cool completely on cooling racks.
- Sift the powdered sugar into a small bowl. Add the vanilla and the cream while whisking. Add the cream tablespoon by tablespoon—it could take a bit more or a bit less. What you want is a thick enough icing to pipe through a pastry bag. You don’t necessarily need a pastry bag to drizzle on the cookies, but that’s the consistency you are looking for.
- Using a “straight line” tip on the pastry bag, line up the biscotti cookies about an inch apart and drizzle the icing back and forth for a pinstripe look. You can also just drizzle off the end of a spoon or fork. So whatever works—accuracy is not a requirement here.
Notes
Mind that you need to reduce the oven temp from 350 to 325 before you slice your cookie logs into little biscotti cookies. This gives the oven time to reduce the temperature. This little adjustment assures you will not end up with too-dry biscotti.
The air grows crips; the leaves redden and fall. And so we enter the baking season of pies, cakes and lots of cookies. Looking for more ideas? Check out Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodles, gluten-free raspberry thumbprints or gluten-free Seed Cookies with Fig and Apple Butter Filling or my favorite—the MEGA Cookie, which uses a lot of the same ingredients as the biscotti above. I won’t say Happy Holidays yet—Yikes! But I’ll wish you happy baking. Ovens on!
