Once a year a women’s group at our church gets together for an exchange of sorts. Everyone brings a basket and 12 items (preferably home-made, but not necessarily so). We put all our items out, then go through and pick 12 miscellaneous items to put in our baskets. Basket liners and bows are provided for decorating the baskets. Then we get to take our basket and give it to whomever we please. I love this idea – because there might be people who could use a little bit of cheer, and they might not ordinarily be in a specifically identified group of people (homeless, needy, poor, etc.)
This year the organization of the event was a bit sketchy because our fearless leader was transferred out of state (or her husband was, and she followed). But there were enough of us interested that we pulled it together sort of at the last minute.
Here are the things my daughter and I made:
You might remember this biscotti recipe from here. I just cut the pieces a bit smaller for this event.
The English Toffee Cookies come together very easily too. Here’s the recipe:
1 cup Butter 2 cup Flour
1 cup Sugar 1/2 cup chopped Nuts
1 egg (separated) 1 tsp Vanilla
Cream butter & sugar together. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Add flour. Spread thinly over a cookie sheet (14 x 17") to 1/8" thick. Spread egg white evently over mixture. Sprinkle with nuts and press lightly. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes (until slightly brown). But while hot into diamond (or desired) shape.
We have a friend who has had a rough week – too much going on at work and the death of a close family friend. She was not around to get the announcment about the baskets but I knew she’d probably enjoy participating, so at the last minute I decided to pull something together for her to take as well. I have boxes FULL of card-makings. These are cut and colated pieces for stamped cards that I usually offer at classes. But I always over-prepare in case extra people show up. After the class is over, these little card makings just sit around and rot. So I dug out a bunch of them and created them in a hurry. Enough so we could have three cards per basket (12 items x 3 cards each = 36 cards). They weren’t all the same. It was just a hodge-podge of stuff, but they came together well. Here are the cards I found/made:
They were originally designed for total non-stampers to create, so they are the simplest stamping ever. . . but that’s what makes them quick, right? We had varying numbers of each card, so the 3 packs were quite varied.
Putting the baskets together didn’t take very much time at all. Here is the basket I ended up with.
My daughter’s basket was dropped off even before we got home. She wanted to give hers to her teacher. I’m not sure which neighbor we’ll give mine to. We’ll probably take it to the corner neighbor (don’t think you’ve seen their house in a picture yet). If they’re not home, we’ll take it to a down-the-street neighbor who lives alone (we won’t leave the basket on the doorstep of the first neighbors because we never know when they’ll be in – and they have a PACK of dogs who would tear it up before anyone could see it). It would be fun to have a whole bunch of baskets to hand out. Maybe next year, right!?
This recipe is one I originally downloaded from a bed & breakfast place (Agate Cove Inn). As much as I don’t like cooking, I really do enjoy reading recipes. I found this one when doing a search for something travel-related (I way prefer traveling and eating out to cooking – that would explain this discovery more appropriately, I suppose). My printed recipe tells me this discovery was made on October 17, 1999. Alrighty then.
This is one of the easiest recipes I have. No – that’s not true. All the recipes that I have that I will share would have that description. I’m all about Flop-Proof Cooking. There are so many ways a person can flop. It’s not a confidence booster. So this recipe, while it turns out slightly differently (you’ll see why) it’s always a big hit. And people are totally impressed that a) I know what biscotti is and b) I actually make it from scratch.
Here’s the original recipe:
Ingredients:
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon strong coffee (cooled)
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon milk
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup walnuts
1-1/3 cup chocolate chips (semi-sweet)
3/4 cup dried cranberries or cherries
In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients and blend well. In a small bowl, whisk together all liquids, add to dry ingredients with mixer. You may want to add a few drops of coffee to get mixture gooey. Add chocolate chips, walnuts and cranberries. Turn dough out onto a well-floured board and form into 1/2 x 3-1/2 inch flat logs. Cook on greased/floured cookie sheet at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes. Cook until cake-like. Cool. Cut logs into 1/2-inch pieces, lay (cut-side down) flat on cookie sheet and bake another 6 to 8 minutes at 300 degrees one side only. (For a harder Biscotti, cook both sides of cut pieces for 6 to 8 minutes each side.) Cool and serve.
Variations: Pistachios, almonds, or dried cherries.
Yields: approximately 32 Biscotti. Recipe easily doubles if needed.
Okay. That’s how it started. By the way, this recipe has never been done without doubling in my kitchen. It’s ALWAYS double.
I’ll share pictures of my process and tell you about variations. You see, whenever I see things like "1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon" of anything, there’s WAY TOO MUCH DETAIL in that. Give me a break. I call that "a quarter cupish" I think that’s descriptive enough.
The dry ingredients are a no-brainer really. I did pretty well following those directions (maybe because they’re at the beginning of the recipe.
Then come the wet ingredients. Oh – wait. Before I start, I always put the craisins (dried cranberries) into a container, fill it with water, and microwave it for 3 minutes(ish). And then let them sit. Because craisins are already dry. So if you put a dry ingredient in the oven, it becomes rock-like. If you re-hydrate the craisins, when you put them in the biscotti to bake, they end up moist and manageable in the final product.
If this looks like more than what the recipe calls for. . . ummm. . . it might be. This particular measuring cup doesn’t give the sum of 3/4 and 3/4. So I just went over the line(ish) with a few extra for good measure. Then filled it with water. BTW – if this overflows in the microwave, . . . consider yourself warned.
Okay – then the wet ingredients. Eggs. A lot of biscotti recipes call for lots of eggs. I’m not sure why. This recipe is great – and healthy . Only 1 egg (well – two if you double the recipe). And these are nice fresh farm eggs. Brown ones. With very healthy yellow yolks. This picture is here specially for Louise’s Prince Charming. Nevermind – when you come to visit, I know a place that sells insipid weak-looking unhealthy whitish/creamish colored yolks.
Did you know that when you get eggs from chickens, it’s a good practice to give them back their eggshells? Otherwise they peck at their laid eggs to get whatever nutrient they need from these shells. All this is part of my farm-life education. And I’m sharing it with you. This is really apparently true. I had no idea.
Now it calls for "strong coffee." I understand that. But if strong coffee is good, then wouldn’t this be better?
I mean – in reality, I’ve used strong coffee before. I’ve even used Sanka when I made this recipe for a cooking class. As for the 1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon? Well – let’s just put it this way:
Today it looks like I used about half a cup. And the reason the picture is blurry is because . . . it’s hard to take a picture of something while holding something else. And the reason the bottle is empty is because I’ve obviously made this recipe a lot of times before this. And I don’t think any other inferences are necessary. Actually, I use anywhere between half a cup and 3/4 cup.ish.
I forgot to take a picture of the bowl with the wet ingredients. It doesn’t look like much to go with all the dry ingredients. But that’s okay. Just go with it. I’m telling you – this is a flop-proof recipe. Sometimes it’s a little wet. Sometimes it’s a little dry. It turns out. Really! So if your mixture looks something like this, it’s okay.
Because then you’re going to add the craisins. Pour off most of the water from the craisins, but save it – just in case. The moisture from the craisins does the magic.
Today’s biscotti turned out drier than last time’s biscotti. There are two reasons this might have happened. 1) My empty bottle of coffee flavoring and 2) I let the time on the craisins in the microwave go longer than normal, and a lot of the moisture that I might have saved ended up splatted and pooled all over my disgusting microwave (btw – this is one reason I don’t love cooking. . . clean-up issues)
After you add these things:
and
You can mix the whole mess together. Oh yes. You don’t want to put the chocolate chips in immediately following the craisins. Especially if you forgot to rehydrate them from the beginning. This is a little physicschemistrynaturekitchenscientific chocolate phenomenon. When chocolate chips come in contract and are stirred with something warmish in nature, they end up not holding their integrity. They become mushy. And smear all the way through your biscotti. Which is not a bad thing, per se. It’s just different from the final product picture that I’m going to show you. It has happened to me before – and then you have like chocolate ribbons throughout the biscotti, which is actually quite attractive. It all depends on how you want the chocolate. Oh – another variation: The time I used Sanka for coffee flavoring, I also used sweetened carob chips. To make it healthy.er. People really liked it. But I have issues with fake/non-chocolate, so I prefer to go with the full strength, unadulterated chocolate. Semi-sweet.
Okay, so you divide the biscotti mix onto two baking sheets. Then you flatten them out and sprinkle them with flour (to make it look "official") then you put them in the oven (pre-heated – did I mention that?).
I bake them for about 20 minutes. I actually check them when I start smelling them. If they look crispy around the edges already, I turn the oven off and leave them in there to cool with the door closed. Because it’s easier to cut slightly dried biscotti. And I don’t let it go all the way to normal biscotti consistency. We prefer to eat them like cookies. So if they look and smell like this they’re probably ready to turn off:
When they’re cool, and you don’t have anything else going on, you can cut them. I find a bread knife works well. They might be pretty crispy (depending on how cool they are – if you want an easier slicing job, just take them out a bit before they’re totally cooled) And you’ll end up with delicious, hearty, yummy and in high demand
. Only 1 egg (well – two if you double the recipe). And these are nice fresh farm eggs. Brown ones. With very healthy yellow yolks. This picture is here specially for 
