Walnut Black Pepper Biscotti

BiscottiSQmed

Anybody out there old enough to remember SOAR? The Berkeley Searchable Online Archive of Recipes, that has since become RecipeSource? It was (is) this wonderful place created to preserve family recipes, back before the explosion of the interwebs and when you still *really* needed cookbooks.  I used to read that for fun – they have it sorted by geographic region and ethnic groups. It was a fascinating place to browse.  So, back when dirt was new and I wanted a good biscotto, that was where I went to look and found this marvelous recipe and printed it out on my dot matrix printer. And saved that paper for years. These are fantastic biscotti – crunchy, but not so hard they break your teeth. Dippable without disintegrating – truly a work of art. 

I eventually lost that recipe, and despaired. But was saved by our Google Overlords. I found it again at Cooks.com (because for the life of me I cannot find it again at Recipe Source – weird, I know.) Biscotti are pretty damn easy to make, and have a big wow factor. Although I swear anything that isn’t a chocolate chip cookie seems to have a big wow factor because no one cooks any more. But, hey – that’s why I blog!! Shall we?

Cream the butter and sugar.

Biscotti1MED

Add the eggs and vanilla.

Biscotti2MED

Sift your flour with the salt and leavening, grind the pepper and zest the orange.  

Biscotti3MED

Chop the nuts. Please forgive me, I apparently saved the shot of the chopped hazelnuts for another recipe and not the walnuts – but we’ll include them here just for continuity.

Biscotti4MED

Mix in the dry and the nuts. 

Biscott5MED

Flour your hands and make a log.

Biscotti 7MED

Bake it, cool it and slice it in even pieces. Save the biscotti butts for taster-testing. 

BiscottiZmed

Bake ’em a second time (that’s the bis to the cotto), and away we go – snack time!!

BisCafSQmed

Here’s the recipe. Try them – they’re easy. Some like to dip one side in chocolate, but I think that overpowers the wonderful play of the heat and the orange with the toasty nuts and butter. But hey, that’s probably just me.

 

Author: Karen Maginnis

1 thought on “Walnut Black Pepper Biscotti

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.