hey hey hey everyone, welcome back!
Today in the kitchen we are making gluten-free, dairy-free biscotti with chopped almonds and dried cherry, and dipped in dark chocolate with a drizzle of white chocolate for a finishing touch.
These are perfect for dipping in your afternoon coffee, or hot chocolate if you're me and not a coffee fanatic:).
Basically, we took a general biscotti template recipe, and turned it into our own recipe: gluten-free - and it also happens to be dairy-free - almond cherry biscotti!
I'd never tried dried cherry before, so this was a creative risk. Of course, I've had fresh cherries, and other dried fruits, so I could imagine the flavour, and almonds seemed like they could make a great combo, and they did! The flavour was great with these add-ins, and the chocolate on top added a different texture from the crunchy biscotti.
***You could totally do a nut-free version without almonds, or add something else instead of them, if you'd like.***
Just a heads-up that decorating your biscotti is (arguably) the best part, but it does take a while.
Some tips from our experience making this recipe:
1. Guess what? Kneading GF flour doesn't make it any tougher, because there ain't no gluten to strengthen like you would in pizza, so you can't really overknead this dough and end up with tough biscotti. I mean, obviously you don't want to "have at 'er" for more than a few minutes, when it comes together, but if you knead a second longer, you won't ruin your dough.
2. This is just a general GF flour tip, but its still really important. Basically, GF flour isn't an equivalent for wheat flour, so that's why many GF blends have added stuff like xanthan gum in it. These additions make the flour easier to use in regular recipes when you just want to replace GF flour for wheat flour, so xanthan gum is important. Our blend had extra stuff in it, so we were able to use a regular biscotti recipe and replace the flour 1:1 easily and it turned out great! This isn't a magic formula, and it doesn't work all the time (cough, cough, GF sandwich bread), but it might help you out a bit in this recipe.
3. Slice your biscotti on an angle, but be super slow when you cut. I think this might just be a GF thing, but my biscotti had the tendency to lose one corner when slicing - every time. I learned to start the cut at a normal pace, then really slow it down when you've cut about halfway through so you don't break off your biscotti.
4. Figure out where you are gonna put your biscotti to harden the chocolate before you dip it. Seriously. It sounds elementary but it is so important, because I was building a crazy structure trying to let all the biscotti lean on something while the chocolate was still melted without destroying the chocolate on them.
Techniques you'll master in this recipe (based on our own experience testing this out):
- decorating!!!
- dealing with melted chocolate. We used a double-boiler, but a microwave could work too.
- twice-baked goods: making sure they are crunchy and delicious without being overly dry.
- creativity! I don't think this counts as a technique but it's so important in anything in the kitchen. Come up with your own flavour combo - sweet or savoury.
Basically, when you make biscotti, you are baking a flat loaf, and then you use a serrated knife to slice it up and bake it again (glorified toast, anyone?).
Here's some pics for inspiration:). Much love, and enjoy your biscotti!
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