With every season and holiday baking rituals arrive. I never thought much about them as a child. With each year that passes by, I cherish these rituals more and more. Easter is quickly approaching. Mom and I make bunny, egg, and lamb shaped chocolates, bunny shaped bread and various versions of ricotta pie and biscotti. The baking marathon starts on Good Friday and ends at the Easter table littered with a plethora of savory and sweet dishes.
In anticipation of the Easter bake-off, my sweet tooth and fidgety hands are warming up in the kitchen making biscotti. Biscotti means twice cooked as these tasty cookies are cooked in a strips, sliced and then cooked a second time. This easy to make biscotti recipe can be easily adapted to include your favorite nuts, dried fruit and chocolate.
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 stick of butter
- 3 eggs
- 3 cups flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- toasted hazelnuts
- dried cherries
Combine sugar and butter. Add well-beaten eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla. Mix together. Add as many hazelnuts and dried cherries as you like. I added approximately 1 cup of each. The dough can be quite sticky. If it’s too sticky to work with add a bit of flour to the mixture. 
Form 3 strips approximately 4 inches wide and 10 inches long. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and slice. 
Place under broiler to brown both sides (approximately 5 minutes per side).
Remove and voilà! Your home will be full of aromas of roasting hazelnuts and you’ve got home-made biscotti. They are delicious served straight out of the oven or for breakfast dunked in coffee or as an afternoon snack.
When winter strikes, I find myself spending more time baking. A few years ago my Mom gave me a leather bound book with my grandmother Louise’s signature recipes. She hand-wrote each one. It is the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received. I keep adding more of my grandmother’s recipes to it, testing them and retesting them.
I recently made a version of her anise biscotti. In Italy, the term biscotti refers to a twice-baked cookie. I adapted the recipe using butter instead of margarine and orange essence instead of anise oil.
I was a bit worried when I mixed the ingredients together, rolled out the dough and it looked a little less than appetizing!
15 minutes later and out came a tray of sparkling gems.
The cookies were melt in your mouth-crumbly and packed a chocolate punch. Serve them warm or at room temperature. The next time I make them, I’ll try reducing the quantity of butter.
Luca Montersino’s desserts are available at