De Baking Psychopath

It seems a bit late to say happy new year on January 9, but better late than never! So here's my toast to 2011, may it be a happy and prosperous year for everyone. In the spirit of cutting back on indulgences after holiday-binging, here are these *healthy* green tea (matcha) and crystallized ginger biscotti. Green tea and ginger have been eaten for millennia for their health-promoting and medicinal qualities, and I substituted out all the sugar for Splenda as well as half of the flour for whole-wheat pastry flour. Add some sliced almonds for protein, and you've got yourself a lower-carb tasty treat to go with your afternoon tea or coffee! Matcha and Ginger Light Biscotti (adapted from Leite's Culinaria ) Ingredients : 2 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used half AP, half whole wheat pastry flour) 1 cup granulated sugar (I used all Splenda) 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 tablespoons matcha 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 large eggs 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted 1 tea...

These gingerbread biscotti were a last-minute addition to my Christmas cookie baking. They are a quick way to get all that gingerbread cookie deliciousness in many servings without all the chilling and dough rolling and cookie-cutter mess. In fact, I might just prefer this nut and ginger-studded biscotti over the relatively one-dimensional traditional gingerbread cookie recipe on any given day. The gingerbread flavor is strong, rich, and satisfyingly crunchy. The recipe comes from Fine Cooking and can be found here . The only change I made was to use about 1/3 cup of chopped crystallized ginger rather than the dried apricots. Whichever dried fruit you prefer or have on hand would probably be yummy.

Sugar Cookies from Baking: From my home to yours "Toffee" cookie bars from Pioneer Woman More sugar cookies... Single-headed gingerbread men Cranberry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies Milk chocolate-dipped anise biscotti, Jess's mum's recipe Only edible gifts from me this year...

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. Sinc...

Love during war? Through sickness? Lost love, found again after surviving trials and tribulations across sea and land? Not quite so dramatic, but a tale of two high school sweethearts who went to different colleges....and biscotti. I went to the College of the Big Buff Bird, and he went to the College of Corn Fields. The two colleges were hundreds and hundreds of miles apart. We ended up only seeing each other at most every half year, usually involving him making multi-legged plane trips to see me. In between those few-and-far-between visits, I wanted to send care packages to the boyfriend at the College of Corn Fields, something that would survive the shipping process and not go stale. Biscotti sounded like a good idea. I'd always liked the (expensive) ones in the coffee shops, so I figured it'd be good to see if I could make good ones at home. And they were dry and hard to begin with, so they could withstand some battering in the mail. I've been collecting (mostly ba...