Recipe
2 cups flour
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons butter, softened
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Whisk flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt
3. In stand mixer, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and vanilla, beat 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well combined.
4. Add flour mixture until well combined. Then add chocolate chips. Beat on low.
5. Divide in two even portions. Shape into logs, 1 inch thick, 2.5 inches wide.
6. Bake 30 minutes. Allow cool 5 minutes, cut into 3/4 inch slices.
7. Return to oven. Bake 10 minutes, flip, bake 10 minutes.
8. Cool completely on wire racks.
Today on Cooking with the Wooden Spoon, we are going to be making biscotti. This is one of Matt’s favorite treats. We almost always keep a supply of biscati downstairs at our coffee bar, which is probably our favorite place in the house. Maybe we’ll do a little tour of the coffee bar later. But for now, we’re going to start with chocolate biscati. This recipe was requested by my amazing daughter, Elizabeth. So, she’ll enjoy learning how to make this biscotti. We also actually sell biscotti almost every week at a farmers market near Ridgeway, Wisconsin uh in Ridgeway, Wisconsin. Uh we’ve enjoyed doing that for a while. So, I have made many, many, many batches of biscati. My favorite flavor of biscati is actually cranberry almond. And that’s what my daughter-in-law Julia likes, too. But for today, we are going to make chocolate. That’s Matt’s favorite. So, we’re going to get started with our misan plas. The misan plas, if you’ve watched my other videos, is a French term, and it transliterated means put in place. So, every time I make a recipe, I start with all of my ingredients put in place. So, we have those ready for us. Okay, we have our mison plus set. The very first thing we did was preheat our oven to 325. A lot of recipes call for biscati to be cooked at 350, but in our experience, we have discovered that if you cook your biscati at 325, you have less chance of having brown biscati. So, first task is to combine the dry ingredients. The recipe should be below this lovely video. But in this bowl, we have two cups of flour, a half a cup of cocoa. I use the Hershey’s cocoa. We have 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda, a half a teaspoon of salt. So, I give it a a good stir for a little while just to make sure everything is pretty well combined. So, after this, we’re going to start whipping our butter. This is a little tip that Matt gave me. Matt is definitely the best baker in the family. He’s got a lot of practice and a lot of a lot of good talent. So, he has taught me how to do a lot of baking. Baking is definitely not my forte, but I enjoy it. So, we’re going to whip the butter. [Music] The butter was out on the counter for probably about an hour to get to room temperature to make it nice and soft. It’s definitely came to room temperature quicker today because it’s pretty warm day here in Wisconsin. Usually we don’t get quite these high temperatures, but we’ve had high in the 90s, which is not my favorite. So, that’s looking pretty well pretty well whipped. So then we’re going to add one cup of sugar to our four tablespoon of butter. And we’ll let those combine for a little while. [Music] This is a great consistency. So, we’re going to go ahead and stop there with that. Next, we’re going to add two eggs. Another tip that I got from Matt is he always breaks the eggs before he puts them in whatever he is making. I think that’s a pretty great idea, especially for us because we buy local eggs from a friend of ours. So, you never know, every once in a while you get one that you’d prefer not to use, but it’s just a good practice to put your eggs in a bowl before they go in. Okay. So, we’re going to add these eggs one at a time pretty well combined before you add the next one. Okay. One other thing I do when I cook, I always clean as I go. So, while this is cooking in the oven, I will be doing dishes. This is looking pretty good. Okay, once this is pretty well combined, we’re going to add one teaspoon of vanilla. I just buy the inexpensive acres imitation vanilla. Okay, that is pretty well combined. Sometimes my mixer makes interesting sounds. Don’t worry about that. The mixer is older than my oldest child and he is 29, so it’s pretty old. Next, we’re going to add a little bit of the dry ingredients and we’ll let it combine. Now, as this combined, it’s going to be pretty crumbly, more crumbly than you would expect. And that’s okay. I know the first time I made this, I thought, “Oh goodness, what did I do wrong? Should I add water?” Nothing wrong. And no, don’t add water. It’ll all work out. You can probably tell that I have my mixer on a pretty low setting. Okay, we’re going to be adding one cup of semieet chocolate chips as well. I’m going to go ahead and get those ready. It’s looking great. Once we get the chocolate chips in, we’re only going to let it stir for just a short amount of time. Okay, awesome. Perfect. So B came out and is very interested in what we are doing. I think he thought I was opening a container of something he might be a little more interested in, but I am not. So, okay, we are ready to form these into logs. Since I’m making these basis for the Ridgeway Market, I am pretty precise when I do it. So, what we will do is use our kitchen scale and we will get both of the logs to the same weight. That said 385. This said 380. Wow, that’s pretty close. So, there we go. They’re both about 3 80ish. There’s more in here. So what I do is measure the rest and then just divide it in half. 80. So that’s easy math even for me. Not the best at math, but that’s okay. Matt is a math wiz, so I don’t need to be good at math, right? Okay. So, we’ll video these logs when we’re done just so you can get a better picture of where even on the wax paper they will go. You certainly don’t have to use wax paper. You don’t have to weigh these. They’re just two things that I found work well. Another little suggestion is I usually try to flatten them a little bit and then wash my hands because if my hands are drier, I’ll be able to have a or wet, I’ll be able to have a nicer finished product. So, I’m going to wash my hands. Okay, as I’ve made these for the market, I have discovered that you do get a neater product, finished product if to shape them with wet hands. So, what I’m doing is shaping them into logs that are similar in size. Honestly, the log size doesn’t matter that much because really it’s whatever whatever you would like. um that I have found the size that works for me. Okay, there you go. I really like this waxed paper. Oh, I keep saying wax paper, but it’s actually parchment paper. So, it’s Reynolds kitchen parchment paper. I like it because it has grid little grid marks on it and that helps me keep things about the same size. Again, don’t worry about being too precise, but here’s what we are measuring out. Four by nine. So, just to give you a general idea of what mine end up being. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to cook these at 325 for 30 minutes. And while we cook these, we will do all the dishes. Okay, let’s see what we got. Oh, they look perfect. That’s awesome. So, for the other flavors, I would take a toothpick and insert it and pull it out to see if the toothpick was clean. But for chocolate, can’t do that because every time I put it in, there’s chocolate chips. So, it’s hard to get a good indication of whether they’re done or not. But these are perfect. They look wonderful. So, we will let them cool for about 20 minutes and then we will cut them. Okay. Next, we’re going to cut our biscati into little slices. So, one trick that I would suggest is before you cut the biscati, take some water and brush the top of the biscati with the water. This will help your knife go through the biscati a little easier. Okay. I use a bread knife to cut these. And again, whatever your preference is as far as the width, but I will show you about the size you’re going to want, about this size. So, after you’ve cut it, you’re just going to lay it back on the parchment all together. So, go ahead and cut these. I try to get them about the same size just because you don’t want anybody fighting over it. Right, Noah? Just kidding. Uh, the reason I like them the same size because like I said, we are selling them. So, I don’t want one person to say, “Hey, look at how big your biscotti pieces. Mine’s not.” So anyway, the ends I don’t rebake. Um, we used to actually do samples for of our biscotti, but since we moved from the indoor market to the outdoor market, we decided that samples were just one more thing to blow away. Things in Wisconsin are a lot windier than where we used to live in Pennsylvania. So, we’re definitely learning how to compensate for things in the wind. We have to actually tether down our tent and we have to make sure that whatever we have on our table is heavy enough that it just won’t blow away. So, we do love it here, though. I’ll take the wind any day and actually on a day like today I had said that it was 95 today somewhere around there. Um the wind really does help. One thing that is a little bit of a hindrance, Matt and I both enjoy biking and it is harder to bike here in the wind. So, there are days that we aren’t able to bike because it’s just so windy. But again, that’s okay. I will take it because we love Wisconsin. So, you can see that I’m putting these on the tray so that they’re not touching just because I think that that helps them cook a little better and be crisper. There we go. We got them all on the tray. What we’re going to do is cook them on this side for 10 minutes. And then we’re going to flip them over one at a time and cook them for another 10 minutes. That will give them that crispiness that we’re looking for for the biscati. Okay, we’re going to take these out and turn them. They smell great. They look great. I’m just going to one at a time turn them so that they’re crisp on both sides. It’s more important for biscotti that are light in color. to have them the same on both sides. Every once in a while, little pieces of biscati will fall off and that’s okay. Even if they’re not quite as pretty as we’d like. It doesn’t affect the taste. And we usually don’t sell the ones that don’t look pretty, but that’s okay. Anyway, so we’ll cook the biscati on the other side for 10 minutes and then we’ll just put them on a wire rack one at a time so that they can cool. If we weren’t making these for the outdoor market, we would enjoy drizzling chocolate over them. But obviously in 95° heat, drizzling chocolate doesn’t really work. Okay, our biscati have cooked another 10 minutes and they are done. So basically all you have to do now is wait for them to cool and enjoy. We always have a little biscotti jar. So I will be putting some of these in our cool jar and putting it on the bar. So just a great great great easy recipe and just fun to have. Okay, we’ll be making other flavors of biscati at some point, so join us then.
Dining and Cooking