Orange & chocolate biscotti recipe
First off, can I just say how happy I am that the Great British Bake Off is back on our screens? I always end up live tweeting whilst I watch it, and apparently so does everyone else – my timeline was full of the #GBBO hashtag and I was loving every minute. Perhaps we should pause here and take a minute to mourn poor Dorret’s melted fail of a cake from the first week. Anyway, I’m so pleased to have it back, with its dramas and (possibly a bit too many) innuendos, that I’ve been inspired to bake. After the hint at the end of last week’s show I already knew what one of their challenges would be in episode two, and got to baking it last weekend. It meant I was all ready prepared with a viewing snack and so I settled down Wednesday night nibbling my biscotti!
I’ve never made it before but it sounded like a glorified dunking biscuit, though for some reason in my mind, it has a certain air of sophistication. Perhaps because you buy them all wrapped up in cellophane and always imagine it at a high-class tea, but either way, a biscuit is a biscuit. And these are delicious! I trawled the internet to find a good recipe but in the end I adapted one
I found to suit my tastes. So many recipes involved hazelnuts and I stay well away from those, so I altered this one I found on BBC Goodfood to create my ‘Chocolate and Orange Biscotti’. This is what makes mine ‘non-traditional’ – biscotti is known to have nuts in, but these ones still taste delicious. If you did fancy going down the traditional route though, just substitute in 50g of chopped hazelnuts in place of 50g of the chocolate chips from the recipe on the right.
The process was pretty easy, and don’t be alarmed by the extremely sticky dough. As long as you flour your hands and your surface well, you won’t find it a problem to form it into the classic log shape. Once it’s cooked for half hour or so, you need to take it out the oven for it to cool slightly before cutting it into smaller slices – almost like a loaf of bread – and then place them back into the oven at a lower temperature for another ten minutes. The result is an extremely crunchy biscuit – the best part about this bake is that it will last for three weeks in an airtight container without losing its crunch. The show made it seem a lot more complicated than it is, but I suppose that’s the drama of television! I didn’t even wait for my biscotti loaf to cool after the first bake before cutting it – I’m sure I would have got the stink-eye from Paul and Mary, but they didn’t crumble apart so it was all good.
Again going down the non-traditional route, I paired mine with a classic mug of Yorkshire tea rather than the normal cup of coffee. Either way makes for a delicious mid-afternoon snack, and I also think they’d pair perfectly with a luxurious hot chocolate – so I’ll definitely be baking another batch ready for the autumn chill.
Recipe adapted from BBC goodfood
Heat oven to 180C
2 medium eggs
100g caster sugar
250g plain flourr
zest of one orange
1/2 tsp bicarb
juice of a quarter of an orange
100g chocolate chips
---
Whisk together eggs and sugar. Sift in flour, bicarb, orange zest and juice, as well as choc chips. Fold into the egg mix to form a soft dough. Shape into a sausage shape, flattened to about 3cm thick and bake for 30 mins.
Remove from oven, cut into 1cm thick slices and bake for a further 10-15 mins, cut-sides facing up.
