The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap - Black and White Biscotti

This was my entry into The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap!

In order to participate, the blogger has to use a recipe they haven't posted on their blog before.  They could've made it a hundred times but as long as it wasn't on the blog, it was fair game.  Yeah, I have some cookies that I haven't posted yet but I wanted to do something new and different.  A brand new recipe!  Yay!  I do cookies all the time but I rarely make biscotti, which technically fall under the umbrella term of "cookie".  I've only made them a couple of times before and they have always turned out great.  And they are especially good cookies to ship, which I had to do with three people.  Biscotti in Italian literally means "twice baked".  Twice baking the biscotti dries it out which makes it a great cookie to dip into your morning coffee (or in my case, mug after mug of milk).  I'll be posting pictures of the cookies I received along with links to their blogs in a future post.

So why black and white?  Well, like I said.  I wanted to do something a little different.  Making cookies is pretty simple and I wanted to do something not-so-simple yet memorable.  I had thougth and thought about what to make.  Do I simply alter an existing recipe which I know works or do I think out of the box?  When I came across this recipe on the KAF website, I knew that was the recipe.   The world was suddenly right.  Birds chirped on my fingertips while deer and rabbits hopped around me.  Okay, well, maybe not quite that dramatic ;)  But I knew that this was the recipe I was meant to post.  Yes, that recipe was created just for me (completely disregard the fact that this recipe was developed back in 2009 and lots of other people have made it). 

I hope that the folks who received these cookies all enjoyed them.  And if any of you out there decide to take on this recipe, I hope you enjoy them too :) 

(My family and friends know I am a huge Seinfeld fan, so every time I mentioned these cookies, my husband and best friend would say, "Look to the cookie.")

 
Black and White Biscotti
adapted slightly from King Arthur Flour

6 Tbsp. Butter, salted
2/3 c. Sugar
1 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
2 tsp. Vanilla
2 Eggs
2 c. All-Purpose Flour
2 Tbsp. Cocoa Powder
1/4 c. Mini Chocolate Chips
1 Packet of Sugar in the Raw (or 1 Tbsp.)

1.  Preheat oven to 350.
2.  Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper.
3.  In a large bowl, combine the butter, sugar, baking powder, and vanilla.
4.  Add in the eggs (it may look a little funky - that's okay.).
5.  Stir in the flour and mix well.  The dough will be sticky.
6.  Divide the dough in half, placing one half on the cookie sheet and leaving the other in the bowl.
7.  Now for the the first fun part - you need to spread the dough into a log of about 14" x 2 1/2".  You'll need to wet your fingers with cold water in order to help this process otherwise you'll end up with sticky fingers (which is all well and good if you're five-years-old.)
8.  Put the pan into the freezer.
9.  In the remaining dough, mix in the cocoa powder.
10. Fold in the mini chocolate chips.
11. Remove the vanilla dough from the freezer and repeat Step 7 (the second fun part!).
12. Gently press the Sugar in the Raw onto the biscotti dough.
13. Bake for 25 minutes.
14. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 to 25 minutes.  (Or however long - it doesn't really matter.)
15. Using a serrated knife, slice the biscotti to about 3/4" thick.
16. Stand the biscotti on the pan and bake for another 30 to 40 minutes.  They'll feel a little soft in the center but will continue to dry out as they cool.
17. Enjoy!