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One Badass Cookie--Biscotti

• by Nancy, December 06, 2008

My niece, Molly, with the Badass Biscotti she made from my recipe. Thanks Molly!
Photo credit: My brother, Bruce Ring, one more badass photographer. Thanks Bruce! To see more of his photos, click here.

One Badass Cookie is up and running for the holidays. We’ve got lots of recipes for you in the next few weeks so check back often. So what’s a badass cookie? Click here to see the first badass cookie post for the answer. This week’s cookie is Badass Biscotti made with almonds, pistachios, cornmeal and anise. It’s a buttery, crunchy, intensely flavored recipe I learned when I was a pastry chef, and one of the reasons I like it so much is because it’s made in a big quantity and can fill lots and lots of gift baskets. It keeps beautifully too which makes it perfect for mailing or baking ahead for parties. They’re also great for dunking! When Molly made it recently, her dad (my brother, Bruce) told me that he was enjoying a cup of coffee when the first batch was done. Molly, too impatient to wait to make her own cup of coffee for dunking, reached across the table and dunked her biscotti into his cup, splashing a trail of coffee drips and crumbs across him and the table before he could protest. Too delicious to wait for a cup of joe to brew! That’s one badass cookie. Read on for the recipe, and for the Badass Cookie Tip of the Week. Does it work? You bet your badass it does.

Badass Cookie Tip of the Week: When measuring dry ingredients for cookie dough or any baking recipe, measure by lifting the ingredient with a spoon or with hands and dropping it gently into the cup measure rather than scooping it and shaking the cup measure to level it. Scooping and shaking compresses the dry ingredient and more of it will end up in the cup than you need, resulting in heavy or overly sweet dough. To level dry ingredients in a measuring cup, use a knife or your finger rather than shaking the cup.


Photo credit: Bruce Ring

Badass Biscotti
Note: This 3 pounds 1 1/2 T. flour recipe may be doubled and even doubled again for a maximum of 12 pounds, 6 ounces of flour, yielding 500 cookies. Directions are given in the recipe for handling the large quantity of dough. It is well worth the time and trouble if you need a lot of cookies for gifts or an event. It’s best to have a kitchen scale for this recipe as the flour is weighed, not measured with cups, and the dough itself must be weighed out into chunks to bake off.
Yields 125 cookies, depending on thickness
3 pounds plus 1 1/2 T. of all-purpose unbleached flour
5 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 T. anise seed
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 T. baking powder
2 t. salt
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, room temperature
8 eggs
1/2 cup annisette liqueur or other anise flavored liqueur
2 cups whole roasted, blanched almonds
1 cup chopped roasted blanched almonds
1 cup whole pistachios
1. Measure all dry ingredients except nuts into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or in a large mixing bowl to mix by hand. Crack eggs, stir to combine and set aside. Measure the annisette and set aside. Roast and measure the nuts and set aside.
2. With the mixer on low speed, or gently by hand, add pieces of softened butter little by little to dry ingredients without pausing between additions, and then drizzle in annisette. The minute the dough begins to hold together, add nuts in the same manner. Stop the machine the second all the nuts are in the dough. Do not over mix. Most stand mixers will accommodate a dough containing up to four cups of flour easily. If making a large quantity of dough, use a large (at least 20 cup capacity) mixing bowl to make the dough, or make in 4-cups-flour batches, dividing up the other ingredients proportionately. Then mix all the dough together at the end.
3. Transfer the dough to a sheetpan and refrigerate it wrapped in plastic wrap overnight or for several hours.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove dough from the refrigerator and weigh out in 1 1/2 pound chunks for 1/2 size 11” x 17” sheet pans (3 pound chunks for full size sheet pans.) Allow dough to stand at room temperature until it is kneadable, not too soft. Roll chunks into logs, about an inch short of the length of the sheetpans. Place on parchment paper covered pans, nonstick pad coated pans, or greased pans.  Put two logs on each 1/2 sheet pan, or 3 logs per full sheet pan, evenly spaced. Double sheetpans under the logs to prevent burning.
5. Bake logs approximately 30 minutes or until the dough is set and the top of the log is medium golden brown, not light. Cool on a rack completely before moving on to the next step. Note: For convection ovens, bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then turn and rotate the sheetpans in the oven front to back and top to bottom. Then set oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake 10 minutes more until done.
6. When logs are cool, slice with a serrated knife with a sawing motion as thinly as possible without breakage. Place them again on doubled sheetpans covered with parchment, nonstick pads or greased, lying flat and end to end. Rebake them at 325 degrees about 10 - 15 minutes until even light golden brown and cookies feel firm and dry to the touch. Cool on racks, store in airtight containers. Will keep several weeks. Do not refrigerate.



Photo credit: Bruce Ring
Mmmmm, I like my biscotti buttery but I have seen recipes for biscotti with olive oil instead. This one looks good for those olive oil fans out there.
Do you have a Badass Cookie recipe for Nancy and Laura? Send it to us using the comments link above and we’ll test it. If it’s badass enough, we’ll post it as a Reader’s Recipe in future One Badass Cookie posts and you’ll win a copy of Nancy’s book.

see also: One Badass Cookie - Ginger Molasses Cookie

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