I was in a cinnamon mood last week. Now, I know around the holidays spiced cookies abound. I make plenty of them myself - pfeffernusse and lebkuchen for example. Both fragrant with ground cloves, cinnamon, and so on.
But I wasn’t interested in all those other spices.
I only wanted cinnamon.
So here’s what I did…
First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
I used the almond biscotti my sister-in-law, Nina, contributed to a cookbook my mom put together for me when I got engaged way back when.
Then I made a couple of changes here and there.
So here are the ingredients:
5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons cinnamon
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup slivered almonds
1 more egg, whisked with a bit of water
Sparkling sugar and some cinnamon, combined
~~~
First, I melted the butter, and then set it aside to cool.
Next, I whisked together the dry ingredients.
Oops! Can’t make cinnamon biscotti without the cinnamon.
Next, I put the sugar and eggs in the bowl of my mixer and beat them until they were pale yellow and thickened.
Then I added the vanilla and the cooled, melted butter.
Then I added in the dry ingredients (sorry, no picture for some reason – my photographer is a slacker, apparently. Oh, wait. That would also be me. Hm.)
Once the wet and dry ingredients were just combined, I added the almonds. I just kind of kneaded them in quickly by hand.
Looks good already, doesn’t it?
Then I dumped the dough out onto the counter and divided it into four roughly equal portions.
I suppose “dumped” isn’t proper terminology when writing a recipe, but really, that’s what I did.
Then I shaped each portion into a log on a parchment lined sheet pan (well, two logs per pan) and pressed them down so they were about half an inch thick. They ran nearly the length of the pan – maybe 16” or so.
I brushed each flattened log with egg wash.
and then I sprinkled my sparkling sugar and cinnamon blend on the tops.
Cinnamony and crunchy!
I baked the biscotti for about 20 minutes, rotating the pans at the halfway mark. I lowered the temperature to 325F, then I took the biscotti out and let them cool for about ten minutes, and then I sliced them, on a slight diagonal, about half an inch thick.
Then I placed all those pieces back on the cookie sheets and baked them for a total of 25 more minutes – fifteen on one side, then I flipped them all over and baked another ten on the other side.
I let all the biscotti cool on the sheet bans – no particular reason, I think I was doing something else and got sidetracked – and once they were cool, I packed them away in a box.
Well, not all of them!
