Annie's Biscotti
Unless your family has Italian roots – or you married into one that does – you're probably seeing that photo below and thinking to yourself, that is not a biscotti. That's where you'd be wrong. Here's a fun little Italian secret: we call a lot of different types of cookies biscotti.
Most people are acquainted with the crunchy, oblong biscotti that are actually baked twice as the name implies, but other types have flown under the radar for too long. Italians actually refer to a wide variety of cookies as biscotti – from my personal experience, it seems to be any cookie that would be especially delicious dipped into coffee. These soft biscotti fit that bill perfectly. Despite the glaze, they're best dunked in coffee, although I'll eat them on their own with no complaints as well.
I call these Annie's Biscotti because I associate them with my Memaw, and this recipe came to me from her. In fact, when she distributed her Christmas cookies each year, she'd send extra biscotti just for me. I made a fun discovery when I came across my Memaw's recipe card a year ago, though: as you can see on the card, the recipe was actually her mother's, noted there as "Mom Guariglia"! Technically these aren't just Annie's Biscotti – they're Angelina's Biscotti.
If you look really closely at that recipe card, you'll also see that it's Italian-family-sized – amongst other things, it calls for 2 sticks butter, 6 eggs, and 6 cups of flour! The recipe I've written out below is actually the halved version, but it's really a more appropriately-sized batch by today's standards.
In the place on the recipe card where the owner was meant to denote how many people the recipe serves, my grandmother drew a smiley face. Her smiley faces are pretty memorable, and she included them on every single card she sent me (and sometimes on the envelope too!). This smiley face could have been just random doodle, or a simple way to note that this was a recipe she liked, but I like to think that she drew it there because she knew that these cookies do serve smiles.
ANNIE'S BISCOTTI
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Bake Time: 15 minutes
Makes 2-3 dozen cookies
Ingredients
1 stick butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
2 T milk
½ T vanilla
2½ t baking powder
3 cups flour
Glaze: 1 cup powdered sugar, 1½ T milk, 1 t vanilla or lemon juice
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Prepare a cutting board or counter space with flour for rolling out your dough.
In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar. Then add the eggs, milk, and vanilla until well-blended. Stir in the baking powder, and let the batter sit for a few minutes to foam a little. Add the flour a cup at a time, until the dough is thick and elastic and still slightly sticky. Keep in mind you may need a little more than 3 cups of flour – sometimes it takes me just over 3 cups for the batter to be manageable enough to roll out.
To make rounds: Move the dough to your floured board, and roll to about ½-inch thickness. Use a greased and floured glass cup to cut out rounds from the dough. Place each one onto a cookie sheet, leaving a couple inches between cookies.
To make twists: Start with a piece of dough about the size equivalent of 2 Tablespoons. On your floured board, roll the dough into a rope about 6-8 inches long. Fold in half and twist each half around the other twice. Lay flat onto a cookie sheet, leaving a couple inches between cookies.
Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the bottoms of your cookies are a light golden color (12 minutes for me), then cool the cookies on a rack. When completely cool, prepare your glaze by mixing together the powdered sugar, lemon juice or vanilla, and milk, then dip the top of each cookie in the glaze. Allow the glaze to dry before eating!
Happy Eating,
Natalie