How to Make Pistachio-Spice Biscotti

Italians like these cookies dry and hard, while American versions are buttery and more tender. We wanted something in between—that is, crisp but not tooth shattering.

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– The word biscotti means twice baked in Italian, which refers to the cookie’s unique baking method. The cookie dough is first shaped into a loaf, which is baked. Then the loaf is sliced and the slices are returned to the oven to dry through completely so that they’re perfect for dunking

Into a cup of coffee or a glass of Vin Santo, which is delicious Italian wine. – So good. – It’s so good. – We’re gonna be making biscotti today that are appropriately hard and crunchy, but they’re not gonna be jawbreakers. We are going to make a pistachio spice biscotti today,

Something a little bit different. Let’s start with one and a quarter cups of pistachios. And I toasted these in a 350 degree oven, just lightly toasted for about eight minutes. They’re gonna continue to toast and bake in the cookies. So I just wanted to get a tiny bit of color on them.

So I have one and a quarter cups. I’m gonna take a quarter cup out here and we’ll put the remaining cup into the processor. And I just wanna chop these up until they’re coarsely chopped. That’s gonna be about eight pulses. – [Blonde] Ooh, it smells good.

– And now I have that last quarter cup of nuts and I’m gonna grind these nice and fine. And not only is that going to add some flavor to the cookie, but it’s gonna help ’em make them tender the way we want them. – [Blonde] Nice.

– [Brunette] So let’s grind these for 45 seconds. So it’s been 45 seconds and I have one in three quarter cups of flour. All purpose, two teaspoons of baking powder, quarter teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of ground cardamom. Lots of spices going in here. – Cardamom pistachio is a favorite combo of mine.

– Oh, so nice together. They really compliment each other. Half teaspoon of cloves, half teaspoon of black pepper to give them a little bit of a spicy kick. – Oh, I like that idea. – [Brunette] Yep, quarter teaspoon of cinnamon. And last but not least, a quarter teaspoon of ginger.

– [Blonde] That’s a lot of spice. – It is, now, when we started making these, we were finding that all of the volatile oils and the spices were baking off because the cookies are baked twice. – Makes sense. – So we really had to amp up the amounts here. – [Blonde] Oh, okay.

– So a lot of spice, but you’re really gonna taste them in the final cookie. So let’s give this a buzz just to combine everything, about 15 seconds. Alright, 15 seconds. Everything is nicely combined. Let’s put it into a bowl here. So we’re just gonna keep going.

Since we had the food processor out to grind the nuts, we’re just gonna make the entire dough in the food processor. – [Blonde] Makes sense. – So I have two large eggs. We wanna get these nice and aerated. I’m gonna beat them for three minutes until they’re nice and fluffy.

And that’s gonna help to open up that crumb and that structure of the cookie as well. It’s been three minutes and we can see the eggs are getting nice and fluffy in there. – Yeah, it really changed texture. – I know, just two eggs. They really whip up a lot.

So now let’s add our sugar. I have a cup of sugar. Try not to spill too much. All right, there’s the sugar. Now I have four tablespoons of melted butter and too much butter and the cookies will get that soft texture that we don’t want, but if you don’t add enough,

They’re gonna be really hard. So four tablespoons is just right and then a teaspoon of vanilla. And we want just a little more moisture but no more vanilla. So I’m gonna add another teaspoon of water. Let’s put this into a bowl. – I love that it uses the food processor the entire time.

Really simplifies the cookie making process. – Yes, these are not complicated at all as you’ll see. Okay, I’m gonna add half of our flour mixture to the eggs. I don’t wanna deflate those eggs that we just took time beating up. So that’s why I’m adding just half. – And you’re really being careful

To fold it in with the flour. – [Brunette] That’s right, I don’t wanna be too aggressive here. Alright, that’s pretty good. I’m gonna add the rest of the flour and our chopped up nuts. – Oh, I like it. So some of the nuts were ground down into a nut flour,

But the rest are left kind of chunky. So you get nice, hearty pieces of pistachio. – That’s it, we’re gonna get some nice chunks. I’m just working this together till it comes into a dough and we’ll clean up and we’ll come back and we’ll shape these. – [Blonde] Okay.

– Okay, so let’s shape the dough into loaves for the first bake. Then we’ll slice them up and bake them a second time. – Okay. – So what I’ve done here is I took a marker and I marked off a three by eight rectangle. So I have two of those rectangles

And then I sprayed the underside of the parchment with vegetable oil spray so that it’ll stick. So I’m gonna divide the dough in half ’cause we’re gonna form two loaves here. And the dough’s a little sticky, so I’m gonna flour my hands a little bit.

Now I’m just gonna use my handy dandy guide here. I’m going to shape this into a perfect eight by three rectangle. – Pass me the bowl. I’ll do the other one. – Yeah, go ahead. Want a little flour? – Yeah. – These will spread out as they bake.

– [Blonde] How much do they spread? – [Blonde] Just a little bit. So you’ll end up with about a four inch long cookie. And that’s the perfect size for dunking. – All right, so the key is to get it even. – Yeah, it doesn’t have to be perfect, you know me.

– [Blonde] You know me too. – [Brunette] Just wanna fill that rectangle. – All right. – And then I have a little trick here for making it look even better that I’ll how you. – [Blonde] Oh, you do, is that good then? – [Brunette] I think that’s good. – [Blonde] Okay.

– So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna lightly spray the tops of the cookies with a little vegetable oil spray. – [Blonde] Ah. – [Brunette] And then I’m also gonna spray a spatula. And then this just kind of magically smooths out the tops. It just makes them look really pretty.

– [Blonde] Yeah, well that way you get nice even slices so that they bake and dry out at the same rate. – That’s exactly right. So before these go into the oven, I’m just gonna give them a little brush with some egg white. I beat this with a little bit of salt,

That helps to denature the proteins so it makes it easier to brush. So I’m going to put these in for their first bake. They’re going into a 325 degree oven for about 25 minutes. They’re gonna spread out a little bit and the tops are gonna crack a little bit as well.

– [Blonde] Great. – Hey there, fellow fans of cooking. Wanna stay in the know? Visit Americastestkitchen.com and sign up for our free notes from the test kitchen email newsletter. Get exclusive tips, seasonal recipes, product reviews, and more delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free at americastestkitchen.com.

– Biscotti are twice baked, making them pleasantly hard and crunchy, but the twice baking also makes it possible for them to turn overly tough and hard to eat. We use nuts to prevent this from happening, here’s why. For pistachio biscotti, we first grind the nuts into a fine meel

And then we mix them with all-purpose flour. When this nut flour is added to the liquid ingredients, the flour proteins, glutenin and glyadin form gluten. But the nut meal physically blocks the gluten from linking into a large tough network. Later when eating a biscotto, which is singular for biscotti,

The ground pistachio oil lubricates the cookie so that any smaller formations of gluten are able to slide around freely. And this is why our biscotti have a pleasantly tender crunch that won’t break your teeth. – Alright, I baked the loaves for about 25 minutes and now they’ve been cooling

On their baking sheet for 30 minutes. – [Blonde] Not much of a looker at this point. – They need some more work. – They do. – So it’s time to cut them into individual pieces. I’m gonna get my ruler so I get the first one right.

I wanna do about a half inch piece on a very slight bias. There we go, that looks about right. A serrated knife is really important. Some of them might break a little bit like that guy did. That’s okay, but if you take your time, you should have good luck with most of them.

All right, now biscotti means twice baked. So here we go, let’s do the second bake. – I like how you put ’em on a wire rack. That way airflow can get all around the cookie and really dry it out. – Exactly, and now I’m just gonna do our second loaf here.

Okay, so I’ll put these back in the oven for 35 minutes. I’m gonna flip them over, each one halfway through, and then they’ll be nice and lightly golden brown and crunchy. – [Blonde] Great. – [Brunette] All right, let’s take a peek, it’s been 35 minutes. – Oh, they smell amazing.

– They do, all those spices and you can smell the pistachios too. All right, they’re nice and and dried out. They’re nice and golden brown. – [Blonde] What a lovely golden color. – [Brunette] Yeah, these are perfect. Let’s let these cool completely and then we’ll come back and we’ll enjoy them.

– [Blonde] Okay. – It’s time for a cookie and coffee break. – I love it. – [Brunette] Thank you for the coffee. Yeah, I like to dunk. I don’t know if you’re a dunker. – [Blonde] I am, especially with biscotti, – [Brunette] Although as I said, these don’t have to be dunked.

– [Blonde] Okay. – They’re not so hard that you need to soak ’em in a liquid, right. – Right. – So enjoy them without a dunk first. – [Blonde] Mm. – The spices really come through beautifully. – And you can taste the pistachio. It’s not just there for visual appeal.

You can actually taste it, which is rare. – [Brunette] Yeah, and I love the texture. You can snap it apart. It stays intact, so it’s dunkable, but it’s not a jawbreaker. I’m gonna go for the dunk this time. – [Blonde] Mm, that’s delicious. – It’s good with the coffee.

– [Blonde] Mmhm, and those spices, you get a little bit of cardamom, a little bit of ginger, a little bit of cinnamon, perfect. – Even the black pepper, gives us like a tiny bit of heat in the back. – That’s what it was. There’s a little bit

Of a tickle on my tongue and it’s the black pepper. I it love that. – This is a really nice coffee break. – Yes it is Becky, thank you for making these. – It was my pleasure. – So if you wanna make this classic Italian cookie, start by grinding some of the nuts

Into a fine meel, add extra spice that will survive the double bake and add a little bit of melted butter to the dough, from America’s Test Kitchen, a wonderful recipe for pistachio spiced biscotti. You can get this recipe in all the recipes from this season along with select episodes

And our product reviews at our website, Americasestkitchen.com/tv, cheers. – Cheers, I’ll cheers you with my cooking. – (laughs )That’s a good one. We hope you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it. – Don’t forget to hit that like button and subscribe to our channel.

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