Monday, December 04, 2006

Advent, Day 4

I really do love the holiday season. I was operating in one of my blissful holiday moods Saturday and went to get ingredients to make Cappuccino Biscotti. Cooking and baking are two of my favorite things to do - it is a form of art as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, the recipe seemed simple enough - you can check it out if you want at http://www.joyofbaking.com/biscotti/CappuccinoBiscotti.html .

The first thing was to roast the hazelnuts - then put them in a clean towel to steam, then rub the towel to "skin" the hazelnuts. Well, I don't know what happened, but I ended up with hazelnut skins all over the kitchen and many didn't peel off, so I painstakingly peeled them off with a knife. This took about an hour, I think, though the recipe makes it seem like a simple Step #1. I groaned from time to time, and noticed the students in the house started exiting the area.

The recipe next suggests using a handmixer for the dough. Okay, perhaps they are correct, if you could only cook the dough on the walls of your kitchen, because frankly, that is where alot of my biscotti dough ended up. I think I was laughing and crying at the same time at this point, and students would wander through every once in a while, but not say anything . . . wisely.

I think my biscotti took a good 3 hours to make, but the students tried it and said they liked it. So, although it was excrutiatingly painful to make, it was also quite fun really. . . or perhaps real funny! I've decided to make biscotti for my holiday baking.

Happy Advent, Day 4.

2 comments:

KingJaymz said...

I can totally relate to that. I hope the next batch turns out better. Growing up in hazelnut (or filberts as we country folk call them) country, I feel I can safely postulate that leaving the skin on doesn't effect the flavor if they've been roasted. Maybe try the next batch that way?

Kathys Blog said...

Man, I wish I had tried the 2nd batch like that.....will be leaving them on for the third batch coming up! Thanks, KingJaymz!