Orange Biscotti - And A Mail To God

Dear God,

   

I hope you know me. You must, as I am one of those people who call out to you ever so often, albeit in different contexts. As in 'Goddddhhh!!! This tastes so...gooood!!!!'' and sometimes 'GAWD!!!! Did this have to happen NOW?? - when there is a power cut when I am baking. I am also the same Mom who very often says, 'Godddd!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE HERE?'' to my kids, but lets leave that out for now as its out of context here. Hubby too often calls out to you as in 'God!! Are you gonna bake AGAIN???'- this to me  of course.  If you have ever heard the resounding nnnn... of a groan, it was me when I stood on my bathroom scales - you know the treacherous machine betrayed me yet again. I am also one of your devotees who eats every small bit of the prasad I get. Small introduction for you to recognize me in this ocean of people, but I hope this will suffice as you are God and you will instantly know, that its ME!!! 

Believe me, I really, really do count my blessings every day, cross my heart and sacrifice that last slice of coffee gateaux and hope to die. But God, there are some things which I guess also deserve your undivided and urgent attention. Small things, but in my humble opinion, very very important. Without taking much of your time, I shall sum them up quickly.

• For beginners, can you please redefine a balanced diet as enough appetizers, a main course and a dessert instead of adequate carbohydrates, proteins, fiber etc etc? Yaawn! I know you are God, but I hope you have a heart too? Have a heart!!
• Medical prescriptions should read something like - Rx - Coffee walnut cookies (snack) -  Chocolate pudding (after food) - golgappas (before food). Doctors should examine patients and gravely remark 'So you have been skipping your daily dose of dessert I presume?''
• Boring salads should actually make us gain weight, hence to be treated as a rare indulgence and to be eaten in small quantities.
• For weight loss and good health, dietitians should prescribe a high fat, high sugar, carbs rich diet. Am sure you can make that work God!! Remember you are GOD!!!
• Gorging on all those greasy fries, buttery cookies and cakes, should actually transfer the shine of the fat onto the face, make the skin glow I mean. Please say yes! I will chuck that warm lemon water and honey. Stat!
• Please seriously consider making chewing the most intensive workout possible, burning calories like no other work out can. I promise, I will NEVER miss a workout.
• If someone fell seriously ill, people should whisper and say 'Never have I seen her eating a decent serving of dessert, this was bound to happen..tch, tch'
• Shouldn't every grocery store in India have a baking aisle? Aaaw, God, don't enough of us bake here now and so passionately at that ??

Of course you may not have given much thought to these things, but a baking obsessed, sweet-toothed, weight watching (see, so many adjectives!) foodie's life can be really tough. I have so much more to say ... sigh! But I know other important matters such as global warming and world peace command your immediate attention. So let me stop here today and hope you 'process' my request. Amen!

And while you do that, I shall be content with munching on some zesty Orange Biscotti, err.. low fat God! But only relatively :-(

This again comes from Smitten Kitchen, yes, one of those uber awesome blogs, I am smitten by.  I baked biscotti from Debbie's space, her Almond Biscotti. Since I decided to omit the almonds and use only the orange, I have called these Orange Biscotti. You could make them either way. I would recommend using the almonds as nuts add that touch of luxury not to mention the taste they add.

Since patience is not among my virtues, I wanted to finish this in one batch, so I have made a third of the original recipe. Was also skeptical of keeping the mixed dough waiting to be baked in the next batch. If you bake in a huge oven, go ahead and bake the entire recipe, these crunchy and light biscotti will keep well for several days, just right to much on any time of the day. If you have not baked biscotti earlier, these taste like cookies, but are far crunchier.

Recipe adapted from here, original recipe from Bon Appetit. If baking biscotti for the first time, do have a look at this video here

Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 162 grams
Baking powder - 1 teaspoon
Salt - 1/3 of 1/3 rd teaspoon
Sugar - 100 grams / 1/2 Cup (minus 1 tbspn should be fine too)
Unsalted butter, melted - 46 grams, weigh, melt and cool
Egg - 48 grams / 1, large, at room temperature
Vanilla extract - 1 teaspoon
Orange extract - 1/2 teaspoon (original has 1 teaspoon)
Orange zest - 1 teaspoon
Whole almonds, toasted, coarsely chopped or sliced almonds - 1/3 cup (optional)

Egg white - 1, for brushing

Procedure:

 

YOU WILL NEED : A whisk, spatula, a citrus zester, a dough scraper, a silicon brush, a sharp serrated knife apart from the usual tools.

PROCEDURE: Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C / 350 F. Line a baking sheet or tray with parchment. I have used a 10'' x 12'' tray, use a bigger one if your oven can accommodate. Or halve the above recipe to make a tiny batch in a 9'' square tin.

Mise en place.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt twice. Keep aside.

In another large bowl, take the sugar, melted butter, egg, orange zest and vanilla. Gently whisk to incorporate. No need to work up a volume.

Stir in the flour mixture gently in two additions. When you can still see some flour here and there, add the nuts or chocolate if you wish to. Stir them in gently till you have an uniform mixture. This will be quite sticky. Do not add more flour. 

Now comes the relatively difficult part. Scrape the dough onto the center of the lined baking sheet. Wet your hands lightly, elongate the dough to form a rough log. Pat so that it is 1/2'' tall ( that would be about 3'' wide and 12'' long for the recipe above. If halving the recipe,  the log can be 3'' wide and 6'' long). Am not very sure about this but read that the log should not be way taller as it may have plenty of cracks, meaning lots of crumbly slices. So stick to dimensions mentioned in a recipe! If I am not sure, I think 1/2'' tall should be safe in most recipes.

The log will spread, so make sure there is about two inches space all around the log ( about 4'' space between TWO logs). If the sheet is small ,cut off excess part with a dough scraper and transfer to another sheet.  

 

Pat with wet hands to smooth the top. Use a dough scraper for the sides if needed. A neat, uniform log will give you uniform biscotti. Lightly brush the top and sides with the whisked white.

Bake for about 30 minutes till golden and firm to the touch. If in doubt, err on the side of over-baking. Remove from the oven, let the log remain on the sheet. Lower the oven temperature to 160 C.

Cool on a rack for about 20 minutes or more as convenient. Spray or brush the top very LIGHTLY with water, let stand 5 minutes. This helps soften the log, slice it easily especially if the log has cracked.

Lift the log from the sheet, place on the counter. Using a sharp serrated knife, cut the log into 1/2'' wide slices (cross-wise or diagonal). Uniform slices is uniform baking. Place the knife on the log, gently but firmly press it down to cut all the way through. The log should be baked through, but will still be moist and softish.

 

Don't worry if you don't get perfect slices. As long as the biscotti doesn't crumble into bits and pieces, rough looking slices should taste just as good. 

Stand the cut slices on their backs on the baking sheet, 1 /2 '' apart. (Imagine just separating the slices of the log). Bake about 15 minutes, remove the tray from the oven. Keep the oven on. The biscotti will be soft but will harden as they cool. Once they cool completely, bite into one. Bake 5 minutes more if you want them crunchier. Remove from oven, cool completely. Store airtight. Should keep at least for a week.

And God, hope you are still around listening to what I am saying, I have just one more request. Please let my biscotti get a nicer curve the next time I bake these. They will make me more happy and also look better on my blog ;-)

And the laa..st one, can we have an option like 'Auto-decide, auto-bake, auto-pictures and write and auto-publish post' my blog? I will use this only on rainy days, I promise...