Praise for Biscotti: The Twice-Baked Cookie

Chocolate biscotti.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't like biscotti.  How could you not?  It's just a cookie that's extra crispy and meant for dipping.  So, why don't more people make them?  I'm sure everyone reading this has made chocolate cookies at some point.  Why not chocolate chip biscotti?  You see these fancy looking biscotti at Starbucks or your local coffee shop and sometimes can't resist buying one.  But, the prices on biscotti at these stores are crazy!  I make biscotti from most of the same basic ingredients you need for cookies.  The only difference between biscotti and a regular old cookie?  Biscotti have to bake for much, much longer.  If you're having a nice long day at home, why not mix up a batch and pop it in the oven?  It's really only a short preparation time and a long waiting period in which your house smells heavenly.

Vanilla biscotti.

I have two favorite biscotti recipes.  One takes around 40 minutes of total baking time for chocolate biscotti with chocolate chips.  I picked up this recipe from searching through cookbooks at a friend's house.  My other favorite is a vanilla biscotti.  This recipe takes around 1 1/2 hours of total baking time.  I found this one in the Pure Vanilla cookbook by: Shauna Sever, where I also found my coffee creamer recipe.

So, the

next time you think about making cookies, choose biscotti instead!

Kale Krazy

So, one of the things I enjoy doing is cooking.  I like to try new recipes and see if I can make something tasty from a pile of assorted ingredients.  I love Pinterest because of this.  I have found probably 80% of the recipes I use on a regular basis on Pinterest.  Don't get me wrong, I have a whole shelf of cookbooks that I flip through and use occasionally as well.  But, Pinterest has my heart when I comes to finding just the perfect recipe.  So, this cooking extravaganza involved kale.  I recently bought a share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and I've been getting kale for weeks.  I know this is horrible to say, but I threw out almost all of the kale the past two weeks.  What can I say?  I tried it once and thought it was too horrendous a vegetable to ever subject myself to that bitterness again.  But, I was determined not to waste any more of my locally grown produce.  Thus began yesterday with a search on Pinterest.  I found 4 recipes and things went haywire from there.  When I cook, I tend to not stop.  For hours.  Until I can't stand any longer.  Yesterday, I cooked for around 5 and a half hours nonstop.  So....this is how I came to make everything pictured as well as a couple of dishes not pictured.  Here is a list of everything I made with my kale and with ingredients I had left over from the kale recipe: sweet potato kale and quinoa fritters, kale and quinoa patties, quinoa and tofu stir fry, quinoa and cucumber salad (with grapes), kale and potato hash, kale one pot pasta, vanilla coffee creamer, and white chocolate chip cookies.  Okay, so the last two had nothing to do with kale.  But, I can only go so many days without cookies and I had to try the coffee creamer recipe (which I actually found in a cookbook!), tutorial to come at a later date if anyone is interested.

Sweet potato kale and quinoa fritters.

Vanilla coffee creamer.

Potato and kale hash.

Sweet potato kale and quinoa fritter mixture.

Kale and quinoa patty mixture.

Cucumber and quinoa salad (with grapes).

Verdict?

All of the dishes turned out as good as I could have hoped for.  I wasn't a huge fan of the hash (it had a lot of horseradish in it), it was a bit too strong for me.  The fritters and patties are my favorites.  The stir fry and salad are good too.  The stir fry is a bit better than the salad, just because I think the salad needed some salt or soy sauce to add a little flavor. The pasta dish is okay, but the kale is a bit too obvious when I eat it, so it's not my favorite.  My husband loves the coffee creamer and according to him this batch of cookies was "the best you've ever made."  So those both turned out great.  If anyone is interested in a link to any of these recipes that I got from Pinterest just leave a comment and I'll make sure to send you the link.  Happy kale cooking everyone!