IMBB10 – Holiday Biscotti

This tenth go-round of the now famous Is My Blog Burning is hosted by Jennifer, aka The Domestic Goddess, and has as its theme “Cookie Swap”. Because of time constraints, I did not attempt to come up with a creation of my own, but instead turned to Epicurious for inspiration. When I came upon the Holiday Biscotti with Cranberries and Pistachios, I knew I’d found my cookie. They looked festive with red cranberries and green pistachios, sounded easy, and featured an ingredient that was new to me – pistachios.



I found shelled pistachios at Trader Joe’s, which made assembling the dough for these cookies extremely easy. The recipe indicates that the finished dough is sticky, but I found it was not difficult to handle. Forming the logs took just a minute or two and wasn’t messy at all. While baking, they smelled amazing – mostly from the butter and lemon, I think. There were a number of comments on the recipe at Epicurious that said a longer baking time was needed, so I upped the time to 33 minutes. After cooling I used a bread knife to slice the logs. There was some crumbling, but it wasn’t bad.



After a second bake and cooling, the cookies are finished with a dunk in some melted white chocolate and then briefly cooled in the refrigerator. I nibbled on the ends as I sliced the logs and ate one finished cookie. The cookies are delicious – the anise and lemon combination is wonderful and the white chocolate is the perfect final touch. I didn’t pick out a noticeable pistachio flavor, though. Maybe I need to eat another one…