Spring Cookie Craze

I seem to have gone a bit cookie crazy lately.

This is my Baking Friday cookie week.  For Easter.

Sidebar - I am having to use Google Chrome in order for the pictures to load right for this here blog, and I have no idea, but somehow I have set the resolution (for this web browser only, mind you) to Large Print like I'm more of a senior citizen than I like to think that I am.  And I have no idea how I did it nor how to return it to normal.

And speaking of senior citizen, I was told on Sunday by a fellow diner/orderer that Captain D's has a senior adult special on Sundays and Wednesdays.  Really?  I look like I would like to know that?  Huh. Little did I know....

Anyway back to cookies.  My cookie week is proving to be a bit of a challenge.  It never feels "right" or "enough" for me to only bake one kind of cookie.  I did two cookies in January for Valentine's Day... although you have to peak under the heart shaped strawberry chocolate dipped and frosted cookies to see the double dark mocha drops dipped in white chocolate hiding underneath...

And I did two cookies in February to celebrate St. Patty's Irish heritage...

And here it is March, and I have to choose only ONE Spring Easter cookie?  Can you celebrate Spring and The Resurrection with only ONE cookie?  Well maybe if it was some super stupendous best ever in all of history sort of cookie, but I'm not sure I would know how to make THAT cookie!

So I have to "settle" for cookie variety.

Only I couldn't seem to "settle" on even only two cookies.  Or even three.  In fact Friday's post - the official post on Friday Baking Cookie # 3 - will feature four cookies on that day alone.

But I actually will share six different cookies at work on Thursday this week.  But I justify it because I also went ahead and baked all of our family cookies for Easter while I was at it and tucked them into the freezer!  So it's true.  I've gone a bit cookie crazy lately.

And I want to share each of them, so I will spread these out over three posts.

Beginning with this one.

I have thought about making biscotti for quite some time but never have.  I enjoy biscotti when they have flavor in addition to crunch.  I like the crunch, and I like dunking to soften the crunch, but too often I find that biscotti has almost no flavor.

Such is not the case with these.  These are Lemon Almond Biscotti from King Arthur Flour. (Do I have an addiction to the KAF website?  Perhaps...)  I baked these last Saturday, and I determined that I was not going to the grocery store for any ingredients.  I would figure out a substitute if I had to.  In this case I had already used all of my lemon zest for another cookie, so I substituted a bit of lemon extract and lemon oil for the lemon zest called for in the cookie dough, and added a touch of vanilla, but otherwise I followed that recipe as is.  Their glaze calls for lemon juice powder.  I don't have any of that on hand, so I glazed with my go-to, lemon glaze standby layered over some melted white almond bark.

Since I haven't served these to anyone other than G and I, all I have to offer are our comments, but we both like these.  The crunch is crunchy but not too crunchy, and the flavor is a nice spring balance of lemon and almond.  Not too sweet, good for dunking (in tea at least, since I rarely drink coffee) and hit that biscotti spot I feel from time to time.  We both liked them, but I perhaps like them just a smidgen more than G.

So here is what I did.  I beat the butter, sugar, salt, lemon extract, lemon oil, almond extract, a touch of vanilla, and baking powder until creamy.

Then I added the lemon juice and eggs, and like KAF says, the batter looked curdled.

Finally I added the flour...

...and mixed that in until fully incorporated.  The dough is a bit sticky.

Now it was time for me to shape the dough for the first baking.  (Did you know that biscotti are baked two times?  It's the second baking that gives biscotti their signature crunch.)  I began by plopping the dough out on my parchment covered baking sheet.

Using a wet spatula I shaped this into a loaf about 14" long...(KAF suggests 13" long...)

...and a little over 2" wide (KAF suggest 3" wide).  I wanted mine to be a bit smaller, so I made my loaf a bit longer and skinnier than suggested.

I baked the loaf at 350 for about 22 minutes.  It was just slightly golden and set to the touch.  And look how much it expanded!

The next step was to turn my oven down to 325 and let the cookie loaf rest for 10 - 25 minutes.  I went about 15 minutes (just enough time to tidy up the kitchen from the cookie crazy that hit me Saturday!) and then spray the loaf with a spritz of water.

But I don't have a spray bottle with water in it.  I used to, but not any more.  And I wasn't going to the store!  So I just used a pastry brush and a light hand to soften the crust just slightly.  It seemed to work ok.

After another 5 minutes of rest, I began to cut the loaf into 1/2" slices.  KAF says to use a serrated knife held perpendicular to the pan.  It took me a bit to figure out that I worked better with a 45 degree angle to the pan rather than 90 degrees, but it wasn't hard.  I sliced almost the whole way through at the 45 degree angle...

...and then finished the cut across the bottom sawing straight across.  And laid all of the slices on their sides.

This time I baked for 30 - 35 minutes until crispy but not too golden brown - just slightly golden.  The two end pieces got a bit too brown, but that just meant that I got to use those for a taste test!  Woo-hoo!

I let these cool and actually put in the freezer for a couple of days until I was ready to glaze.  Here is the glaze recipe I used:

2 cups of powdered sugar
1 t. softened butter
Dash of salt
Splash of vanilla and almond
Zest and juice of one lemon
2 T. (+/-) of milk
Yellow food coloring

Mix these together and adjust the milk/powdered sugar until it drizzles off the end of the fork to desired consistency.  This makes more than is needed for the amount of biscotti showing in these pictures, but I was making enough for a couple of uses.

I also melted one square of white almond bark.  I laid the biscotti on a cake rack over a jelly roll pan.

(Pay no attention to that cookie in the lower left-hand corner.  That is just a figment of your imagination until tomorrow evening's post!)

I drizzled the almond bark first, and there was a small amount of the square left in the bowl, so I simply added some of the lemon glaze to the bark and drizzled that on top of the almond bark.

And then I let the glazes harden and stored in an airtight container.  I will garnish the cookie platter for work and for our family with these.

Coffee or tea anyone?

I hope you'll consider trying these.  They are really quite easy, and like I said above, I really enjoy them.  It has been hard not to keep taste testing!

Thanks again for stopping by!  Much appreciated!