Almond Biscotti

By joeyanne

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups (6 1/4 ounces) whole almonds, lightly toasted
• 1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs, plus 1 large white beaten with pinch salt
• 1 cup (7 ounces) sugar
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Vegetable oil spray

Details

Servings 30
Adapted from americastestkitchen.com

Preparation

Step 1

Makes 30 cookies

large eggs, plus 1 large white beaten with pinch salt

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Using ruler and pencil, draw two 8 by 3-inch rectangles, spaced 4 inches apart, on piece of parchment paper. Grease baking sheet and place parchment on it, ink side down.

Pulse 1 cup almonds in food processor until coarsely chopped, 8 to 10 pulses; transfer to bowl and set aside. Process remaining 1/4 cup almonds in food processor until finely ground, about 45 seconds. Add flour, baking powder, and salt; process to combine, about 15 seconds. Transfer flour mixture to second bowl. Process 2 eggs in now empty food processor until lightened in color and almost doubled in volume, about 3 minutes. With processor running, slowly add sugar until thoroughly combined, about 15 seconds. Add melted butter, almond extract, and vanilla and process until combined, about 10 seconds. Transfer egg mixture to medium bowl. Sprinkle half of flour mixture over egg mixture and, using spatula, gently fold until just combined. Add remaining flour mixture and chopped almonds and gently fold until just combined.

We wanted our biscotti to pack just as much crunch as the traditional Italian kind but also to break apart easily when you take a bite. Adding extra butter to the dough helped, but our ultimate solution was cutting the flour with finely ground nuts. While butter merely made the cookie more tender, ground nuts actually weakened its structure.

While turning out batch after batch of biscotti, we noticed that many of the flavors we added to the dough—almond extract and aromatic herbs and spices—started off strong and fragrant but faded once the cookies had baked twice, since the successive exposure to heat kills off many of their volatile flavor compounds. To compensate, we loaded up on them, in some cases tripling the amount we started with.

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