Sunday biscotti...

Over the recent weekend mornings, I've been rudely awakened by a very enthusiastic bird that sits close to my bedroom window and whistles at top volume right about 6.45am. I found him very annoying at first, because the weekend is when I catch-up on sleep after a busy week of running around like a headless chicken.

Today, I decided to wake-up with Mr. Annoying and thanks to the early morning, have biscotti sitting in the oven at 8.30am! It's a pseudo-candied fruit biscotti. I've been feeling like home-made biscotti for some time now, but since I haven't tried to make it before and with me running around like said headless chicken most days, I'm just too tired to experiment very much anymore over the weekends.

Today, I caved-in. I got an idea of the recipe from here. No, I do not have the array of candied fruits like that in the beautiful  pictures accompanying the blog post, so I made do with red and green glace cherries as well as some mixed peel. To make up for not having REAL candied fruit, I let the fruit soak overnight in some sweet sherry. I also halved the original recipe, tweaked it a bit and converted the measurements to grammes for my ease. It still makes quite a lot of biscotti.

How did it turn out? Absolutely lovely... and very addictive, with or without tea or coffee in attendance!


Lovely jewel-studded dough

Fruit Biscotti with Sherry

90g castor sugar

380g plain flour + 1 teaspoon  baking powder + a couple of dashes ground nutmeg and mixed spice (sieved thrice)

350g glace red cherries, green cherries and mixed peel soaked overnight with 2 tablespoons of sweet sherry

Grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 lime

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

125g salted butter

1. Cream eggs and sugar about 1 minute.
2. Add in butter and vanilla essence. Cream. Mixture will look a little curdled.
3. Gently fold in flour mixture by hand.
4. Then gently fold in fruit.
5. Leave dough in the fridge for about an hour to rest.
6. Remove dough from fridge. Shape into logs and place on a tray lined with baking paper.
7. Bake at 160 Celsius for about 30 - 40 minuutes.
8. Remove from oven and let it cool.
9. Once cool, cut logs into slices with a very sharp knife.
10. Place slices on baking tray on their sides.
11. Bake 10-15 minutes on each side until they are crisp and dry. 

Ready to be baked