I’ve received notes from several of you that the biscotti dough is too dry. And indeed that can be the case, depending on how much moisture there is in your flour (or if you’re dipping and scooping it instead of weighing it). So, I’ve added another egg to the recipe. That should fix the problem. […]
READ ONI told you I like a lot of nuts. As you can see, there’s at least as much almond in these biscotti as there is cookie! Truly, you’ll be amazed at how easy biscotti are to make, and how little time they really take. Begin by whisking your dry ingredients together. Combine your sugar and […]
READ ONLost another bunch of emails from this last week — which I’ve been meaning to get to. In particular a long one from a gentleman who’s new to baking, but has been surprising his wife with some excellent cinnamon rolls. If you’re one of the people who’ve written and haven’t gotten a response, it’s not […]
READ ONThis from Sally C. on doughnut bread pudding. I just read your post about the New York Time’s recipe for jelly doughnut bread pudding. “Penny pinching” my … mmm butt! Have you BOUGHT jelly doughnuts lately? Fourteen would cost you the better part of $20. And a DOZEN eggs fer cripe’s sake! Holy moly. That […]
READ ONThe first machine for rolling ice cream cones was patented. By Carl Taylor of Cleveland, Ohio. Though I have to confess that at the moment I’m not really feeling much like ice cream. The snow, and especially the ice, is making the simplest out-of-doors tasks extremely difficult and time-consuming. The end result has been less […]
READ ONThere’s another popular myth out there, about how biscotti first came to America: with Christopher Columbus. Technically that’s right, if again you define a biscotto not as a cookie, but as anything that’s been baked twice. For Columbus, like all seafarers at the time (and many since) fed his crew with the naval equivalent of […]
READ ONGot a question that basically asked: if biscotti are cookies, then where’s the butter? True, pretty much all cookies have some butter in them somewhere. But what’s butter’s primary job in a cookie? To add flavor, yes, but mostly to tenderize it. That’s a good thing for a cookie you’re simply going to pick up […]
READ ONThere are very few disadvantages to living in Louisville, Kentucky, but snowfall is one of them. Not for me, personally, since I’m a northerner born and raised. It’s what it does to the city. People absolutely panic. The “get your staples!” cry goes up (from folks who seem to think they’ll be home-bound by two […]
READ ONClassic biscotti are loaded with almonds, which is why they cost two bucks apiece at Starbuck’s. This recipe has plenty, about twelve dollars worth, so it may be a budget-buster for some of you (it was for me this week). Feel free to scale back on the nuts. You can swap out some dried fruits […]
READ ONWe’ll never know. One other very frustrating aspect of food history (just like most history) is that it pretty much runs out in the Western world when you get back to the Romans and the Greeks. The reason: because before them, nobody was very much good at writing things down. As a result, they (especially […]
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