Lenox Almond Biscotti
In my late teens, I worked in a small, locally owned coffee shop and biscotti was always a very popular purchase. At the time, I didn’t understand it’s appeal. I thought it was too trendy, dry, crispy, and just not good. As I got a little older, I gave biscotti another try and (like most foods I thought I hated) found that it wasn’t that bad.
I had never attempted making biscotti at home. I mean, it’s so easy to buy during my daily Starbucks run, it’s right there at the register for like a dollar. Well… Starbucks already lost a Madeleines customer to TWD (I haven’t bought them there since) and now they have lost a biscotti customer as well. It’s just too cheap and easy to make at home and Dorie’s recipe is a definite winner. The one downside I see to all this homemade business is that before I just bought ONE and would only eat ONE. Now, making this stuff myself, I have fifteen biscotti sitting here and I just ate four in a row.
So after eating four in a row, I can say that I loved this recipe. It’s one of my top favorites from the group so far. Then again, I’m very partial to sweets made from just the most basic baking ingredients like flour, sugar, butter, eggs and extracts. So really it was no surprise for me, I expected this to be one of my faves. My dough spread a lot in the oven so my advice would be to stick very closely to Dorie’s rectangle measurements, unless you want super thin biscotti like mine. I know I made my rectangle 12 inches long but it was fatter than it should have been so when it spread, it spread big. The second bake time seemed a little off maybe. Next time, I would bake longer so they might crisp up a little more.
I will say though that this is the first time one of Dorie’s recipes left me kind of confused. Usually everything in her directions is so detailed that nothing can be misconstrued and you don’t even need pictures to determine what things should look like. In this one though, it was the whole “stand them up like a marching band” thing. I was like “huh?!?” Now, I’ve seen marching bands in my lifetime but maybe I haven’t seen enough because I kind of stood in my kitchen unsure of what to do for a few seconds. 
I ended up just cutting and separating them a little bit and baked them like that. It all worked out fine.
Thanks go out to Gretchen for picking Lenox Almond Biscotti for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection. Make sure you stop Gretchen’s blog Canela & Comino to see the recipe and read what she thought about her choice.
For next week, Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp has selected Pumpkin Muffins!!
