TWD Lenox Almond Biscotti

Another week FLEW by and here I am with my second Tuesday's With Dorie recipe from Baking From My Home To Yours.  I'm loving this great baking book!  You can get it here at Amazon as well as lots of other places. 

I have NEVER made biscotti before and have often thought of it as being dry like baby Zwieback toast that would only be for dipping in coffee (which I do not drink).  I thought of skipping this week, but didn't really want to since it's only my second week doing TWD.  I also had in my mind that biscotti was a lot harder to make than it really was.  It was just as simple as any other cookie.  You might think that since it has to bake twice, it takes too long.  Well, think of it as baking two sheets of cookies, because these all bake on one sheet.  I felt like it worked well in to my busy afternoon and timed it perfectly with it's resting time before the second bake being right when I needed to pick kids up from school. 

The cookie dough was mixed together quickly and easily.

Dorie suggested in the recipe changing up some of the mix-ins, so instead of using all almonds, I also added some walnuts and pecans.  I love nuts and well, you know what they say, you are what you eat! 

It IS a very soft, sticky dough to work with getting into foot long log shapes on the pan and not too close together, but really it wasn't bad.  You get a little dough on your hands and then you have to lick it off!  (jk, I washed my hands!)

I knew that it really spreads out during the first bake and hoped mine weren't too close together. 

Dorie's first baking time suggestion of 15 minutes seemed like it wasn't enough, so I baked these for an additional 4 minutes and actually thought it could have gone another minute or two, but called it good.  It was a little soft when I sliced them to get ready for the second bake, but it turned out fine. 

They baked up nicely and were crisp, but not hard.  I'm afraid to say that I REALLY liked them.  Kevin actually hates a crispy, crunchy cookie and won't even try a bite.  I LOVED all the nuts and really liked the almond flavor from the almond extract.  So I wouldn't keep eating bites, I bagged them up and am going to give them to a neighbor tomorrow to get them out of my house!

These would be good dunked in milk or hot cocoa.  They would also be great dipped in melted chocolate!  But I do think they are GREAT just as they are!

Another great baked good from this wonderful book!  Thanks to Gretchen at Canela & Comino for choosing biscotti this week.  You can get the recipe for it at her blog.  I enjoyed making it and it tastes great!

Also, if you haven't seen it already, be sure to check out my post from yesterday for some Amazing Hard Boiled Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies that Anna from Cookie Madness and Rita Clumbsy Cookie and I came up with.  It's a great, big, AMAZING cookie!

UPDATE:  For convenience, we've now tried the cookie using only hard boiled egg (1/2 an egg) and no raw egg.  It's even better!  See my post below for the recipe and try it!