Biscotti,… My Old Friend

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Alice Medrich, Baking with Julia, biscotti, cognac, Dorie Greenspan, hazelnut, hazelnut biscotti, Julia Childs, macademia nut, macademia nut biscotti

It’s Tuesdays with Dorie time again and this week it is simply Hazelnut Biscotti!

I made biscotti, for the first time, last fall and it didnt turn out as crisp as biscotti usually is and as a result, it basically went mostly un-eaten. So I was hoping for much better results this time.

It is very easy to mix up and I used a combination of hazelnuts and macademia nuts just to spiffy them up! Due to a little glitch in reading the ingredient list, I wound up using cognac instead of brandy or an amaretto… I think next time we will make sure to have something like that on hand and cut out the salt as the flavor from the cognac was there but it was rather slight over the taste of the salt – but then again that could just be because I’m still pregnant!… I plan to also dip a few in white chocolate tomorrow – if there are any left.

My coffee drinking husband is very much looking forward to sharing these babies at work, since they made the entire house smell heavenly as they were baking away. I really liked the technique of placing the biscotti, once baked, cut and cooled on cooling racks before going back into the oven, it really resulted in the true biscotti crispness that sets the biscotti apart from a simple cookie or shortbread.

This is easily a recipe I can double and make for the holidays, cutting them into shapes with cookie cutters would be just too cute for words! Can’t wait to share these with some friends!

To see how the other Doristas fared with this one, click here! For the full recipe, check out our hosts, Jodi of Homemade and Wholesome and Katrina of Baking and Boys!

Strawberry Genoise Dream!

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Baking with Julia, Dorie Greenspan, French genoise cake, French strawberry cake, genoise, strawberry cake

I must confess… I put off making this cake for as long as I could. It just sounded time consuming and annoying and having to do one recipe before I could do the assigned recipe routine is getting rather old. It just seems a bit much lately. But then Mei and I are finally getting the chance to return to Paris with the husband unit – and we leave TODAY!! So I was uber motivated to get this done before then and posted on time, since I really didn’t have a good reason not to make the recipe and post on time…

Turns out? This is easily a cake made during nap time! Which is precisely when it happened, on Sunday… a perfectly lazy Sunday with  nothing but time and no “have-to-dos” to do!

As soon as Mei got down for her morning nap, I took the liberty of ignoring the pile of dishes in the sink and got to making this cake!

I have made genoise recipes before, so I wasn’t a stranger to this recipe – but I did make one modification that seemed to help successfully fold the flour into the sugar and egg mixture. Doing one third of the flour at a time caused the flour to clump and sink, which was difficult to “dig out’ and de-clump. As a result, we did manage to find a couple balls of raw flour that dusted the plate on the last layer that was poured out of the bowl … but as soon as I realized that we would be having that problem, I just sifted enough flour to cover the surface of the bowl and quickly and gently folded that in – which completely solved the problem with the flour clumping, which really just defeats the effort of all the flour sifting in the first place. And when youre pregnant? The less energy you can expend, the better!

Oh and one more little modification … I doubled the amount of cream, added 1/2 C of sugar and omitted the sour cream. It’s just the way that I like to make fresh whipped cream “frostings” for cakes like this.

I bought three large containers of strawberries which proved to be just enough to fill and top the cake and for Mei to snack on the ones I deemed too small to be worth slicing up. She really enjoys it when I use fruit to make desserts… although I wind up having to buy double of what I need…!

Since we are leaving for Paris today, we sent half of the cake over to the neighbors and they seem to enjoy our little “gifts”… and we are happy to share! I did make a double recipe which proved to be enough to make three layers, so I didnt bother cutting the layers in half – there was so much more strawberry goodness in each bite this way! It was the perfect treat for an after Father’s Day dinner!

Mei got to lick the beaters for the first time by herself!! while watching her beloved Elmo…

To see how the other Doristas fared with their cakes and see their beautiful creations, click here. If you would like to join in the fun, please pick up a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking with Julia” and check our recipe schedule! For the recipes, please check with our hosts for this recipe; Sophia of Sophia’s Sweets and Allison of Sleep Love Think Dine