a day late and a dollar short-almost. thought this challenge was next week and nearly missed it. luckily, cantuccini are easy to make with this recipe from nick malgieri and the recipe from baking with julia is the same as this recipe on his website. since i really did not want approximately 80 cookies in the house, i made one third of the recipe. still, i ended up with about two dozen small, crispy cookies.
honestly, i am a bit of a biscotti snob. when i first opened my wholesale only bakery in 1997, all i made were biscotti. my husband and i sold them to nearly every coffee house in town. my preference is for a softer texture and by softer i do not mean chewy or moist. my biscotti are dry like a biscotti should be; the difference is that they do not need a soaking to bite into. luckily, neither did these cantuccini when sliced according to nick's directions-1/4" thick.
nick takes one step in slicing the biscotti that very few recipes follow and it is also something i learned on my own many years ago just by trial and error. to get perfect slices with almost no breakage, you must let the baked cookie log cool completely. wrap it up and slice it tomorrow if you have to. the reason is that the internal moisture will distribute as the biscotti cools and when completely cold, the crispy outer crust will soften and prevent the edges from breaking as you slice through the log. so listen to nick and listen to me-let it sit!!!
beautiful, clean slices. love the color that the semolina and the pistachio give the cookies slices.
and this is how the log looked after i sliced it-see, no broken pieces!
to see what the other bakers came up with, visit the tuesdays with dorie page!
I love the way you shaped these. Pistachios and semolina sound brilliant. Wish I would have thought to substitute flour because I didn't have enough and had to go back to the store.
ReplyDeleteYou had me at semolina. One of my favorite flavors.
ReplyDeleteThey look great. I had pistachios in mind but semolina is something I will try. I am sure the kewda water must have smelled heavenly.
ReplyDeleteI love the look the pistachios lend to the cookie. Very pretty cantuccini!
ReplyDeletesounds like a great combo of flavors. I hope you husband got to try some (and that he brought home a bunch of morels--how nice!).
ReplyDeleteLove pistachios! Great looking biscotti.
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