On Bribing (II): Biscotti

I'm here in CA for a small, field-specific conference without my thesis advisor, and it's been a little scary to meet a very tight knit community of scientists who are the prominent investigators in our field of study, without my advisor to help me navigate the way and introduce me to people.

Luckily she has some close friends who did come, and she asked them to keep an eye on me and help me get oriented (translation: babysit me). So I wanted to try to repay the favor by bringing a gift to help sweeten the deal and just say thank you for their support (translation: bribes). My advisor suggested buying their preferred alcohol for bribes, but I wasn't going to bring alcohol in my luggage, and as bad luck would have it, the duty free store at the airport was closed when I arrived.


So good thing I'd also brought some fresh homemade biscotti for the purpose of bribing--much more my style. I made the triple-ginger biscotti again, because they were just soooo good. Since they had nuts but no chocolate in the original recipe, I decided to do another biscotti recipe that had buttloads of chocolate (and sans nuts in case they didn't like or couldn't eat nuts) to balance out the care package.

These double chocolate biscotti are a chocoholic's delight--dark, rich, buttery-crisp, and just overall a great chocolate treat. I used really dark cocoa powder I get from the fancy chocolate store in combination with some Dutch process cocoa, but really any good quality cocoa will do. I love how the baking and toasting process dehydrates the white chocolate chips and actually makes them crunchy--I enjoy that texture much better than if it was gooey and melty.

Perfect for those everyday bribes to help as a social or professional lubricant (if alcohol is not preferred or available).


Double Chocolate Biscotti (adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Cookies)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1 & 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup white chocolate baking pieces (I switched the ratio of white and dark chocolate--less white chocolate to make it not as sweet)
1/2 cup semisweet chips/chocolate chunks

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375. Prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with foil or parchment paper. Lightly grease.

Beat butter at high speed for 30 seconds, add sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and mix until combined. Beat in eggs, one at a time and scraping down the bowl in between each addition. Mix in the flour slowly and stop if it gets too thick for your mixer and mix in the rest by hand with a wooden spoon. Stir in the chocolates.

Turn dough out on floured surface and divide dough into two portions. Roll out into logs about 9 inches long, place on lined cookie sheet, flatten to about 2 inches wide.


Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 min until wooden toothpick comes out clean. Cool on cookie sheet for about an hour (very important because the dough is very delicate when warm and the log will break if you don't let it cool and set enough. i.e. I picked it up too early and it cracked in half. The trimmed off ends were tasty though). Reduce oven temp to 325.


Slice biscotti into 1/2 inch wide slices. (Optional: a spritz of water on the top to moisten the crust will help make your cuts cleaner.) Place slices cut side down on the cookie sheet and bake at 325 for about 8 min. Flip the slices over and bake for another 7-9 min. You just want to get them dry and the exposed cut side should be stiff/crisp. Even if they give and seem soft in the middle when you press down on them, it's okay because they'll harden all the way through as they cool. You don't want to overbake these since they're too dark to tell if you've burned them.

Store at RT for 3 days (really, I'd say up to about a week or two) or freeze for up to 3 months.