September 2008 - BISCOTTI BAKE OFF

Pat Slattery gave me the inspiration to kick off a September County Fair with a
BISCOTTI Bake Off.

LET'S DO IT!

No poll this time, just PURELY CREATIVE & DELICIOUS BISCOTTI RECIPES.

This will be a great way to practice those new recipes we have and for those that have never made biscotti, well then, it's time you learn.
Biscotti is quite addictive and hard not to eat on ALL DAY LONG.

Post your biscotti recipe with one picture here and of course, on your homeblog.
If any of you get the wild hair to do a complete step by step how to, then just link the newbies back to your homeblog. If you want to republish an older biscotti post, go right ahead. This event will be more about having a large collection of biscotti recipes in one place, giving others inspirations and new recipes to try.

I look forward to all your wonderful ideas.
Y'all ROCK!
Jill McKeever

P.S. DEADLINE FOR THIS EVENT SEPTEMBER 21, 2008

Tags: baking-events, biscotti, food-events

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ivy on September 17, 2008 at 4:46am

Olive oil is a base for many Greek traditional cookies. There are many kinds of these cookies starting with the famous melomakarona (honey cookies), moustokouloura (must cookies), Sousamokouloura (sesame cookies), krasokouloura (wine cookies) and Ladokouloura (meaning oil cookies) , each one having a unique taste according to the ingredients added.

Every Friday morning we have our Tupperware meeting and some of us bring along cookies, cakes, pies etc. Two Fridays ago we had tons of things to eat but I liked these koulourakia (biscotti) a Cretan lady had brought with her and asked for the recipe. I shall give you the exact recipe as it was given to me and you can make as many as you like. I made one fourth of the recipe and had quite a lot of cookies.

You know by now that I like to play around with the recipes so I added my twist to it. For a start I forgot to buy oranges so instead of the orange juice and zest I added ½ cup of lemon juice and the zest of 1 lemon. I added brandy and for the rest of the juice of the orange I added apple juice. When I finished with the dough I made half the way she suggested and in the other half I added 1 cup of those lovely craisins my blog sister Val sent me some time ago and 1 cup of roasted almonds.

When baking them, I had a misfortune which in the end wasn’t that bad but I was upset at the time. Just a little while after putting the tin in the oven we had power failure. They were nice and brown outside but inside they were still soft. So instead of baking them the second time for fifteen minutes, I cut them with the knife and spread them in the tin and they baked only with the warmth of the oven. They turned out great except that they lacked a bit of colour but tastewise they were great.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Baking time: half an hour

Ingredients:

3 kilos all purpose flour
1 ½ glasses of sugar
4 glasses of olive oil
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 glasses of fresh orange juice
1 spoonful of orange zest
1 tablespoon of baking soda
1 ½ glass of brandy or red wine or tsikoudia or ouzo
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground cloves

Extra optional Ingredients:

1/2 cup of roasted almonds
1/2 cup of craisins

Directions

I forgot to ask her about instructions, so this is how I did them.

In the mixer bowl I added the olive oil together with the sugar and beat it for five minutes at full speed. I then reduced the speed to medium and dissolved the baking soda in the lemon juice and added it to the mixture. I added the lemon zest, brandy and the spices and finally I sieved the flour with the baking powder. I changed the beater and added the dough hook and kept adding flour until I had a soft dough which did not stick on my fingers.

With half the dough I made a roll which I cut into slices (about 1 cm) and without separating it I placed it in a lined baking tin. In the other half dough I added the craisins and the almonds and kneaded them in the dough. Again I did the same thing.

I am submitting this recipe to the Great Cooks Community, September 2008 - Biscotti Bake Off.

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Permalink Reply by Ivy on September 17, 2008 at 4:55am: Ladokouloura (Olive Oil biscotti)

Olive oil is a base for many Greek traditional cookies. There are many kinds of these cookies starting with the famous melomakarona (honey cookies), moustokouloura (must cookies), Sousamokouloura (sesame cookies), krasokouloura (wine cookies) and Ladokouloura (meaning olive oil cookies) , each one having a unique taste according to the ingredients added.

You may read the recipe here.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ivy on September 17, 2008 at 4:57am: Sorry the post came in twice but I had an internet failure while sending it in the first time and could not see the post so I sent it again.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jill McKeever on September 26, 2008 at 12:38pm: Thank you Anne, Chilicat, Maria, & Ivy for taking the time to submit your biscotti recipes.
I am adding them to my own collection and looking forward to treating my local friends to your delicious eats.; ▶ Reply to This