Nutella-Pistachio Biscotti

 

I'm here to tell you about my absolute biggest weakness ever. Nutella! This delectable chocolate hazelnut cream might as well be my drug of choice. I adore any and everything containing the brown gold, but honestly in a pinch a spoon and the jar will suffice. I'm pretty sure you remember one of my favorite ice creams this year: Nutella Ice Cream. What a treat this was and since it is so easy I have made it several times more since it was featured on my blog. In fact, my sister who is visiting has been begging me to make it so she can try it as well and I might just have to oblige.

I'm sure you are wondering where I'm going with this declaration of addiction love but I do have a point for admitting my weakness in a public forum. See, I was craving something with Nutella a few days ago and knew I had to satisfy the monster or it would only get worse from there. My husband (bless his heart) knows about this obsession all to well and being the good man he is, he went on the internet to find me a recipe I could not only eat, but also blog about. Now, that is what I call love! This is how he came about this biscotti recipe and I was immediately sold, especially after I remembered that biscotti could very well be consumed with a cup of coffee for breakfast (lunch or dinner), just don't tell anyone I encourage this.

The recipe is again super easy (see a trend here), but since the cookies are baked twice (hence the name, which means "twice baked" in Italian) it is a little time consuming. I think this was truly the first time I made a biscotti recipe and it just "worked". In the past I didn't have problems with baking it the first time, but once I had to slice the cookies for the second round of baking, disaster struck and the biscotti always fell apart unless I cut them way thicker than they should have been and then you might as well keep your dentist on speed dial. Well, that all changed with this recipe. Eggs and sugar are whisked in a stand mixer (or you can do the whole recipe by hand with a little muscle power) Nutella is incorporated until the mix is emulsified. Flour, baking powder, and a little salt are added and finally shelled, rough chopped pistachios are thrown into the mix. The dough is pretty tough and sticky at this point but you turn it out on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat, grease your hands a little and form the dough into two equal logs. They are baked for about 25 minutes, then cooled for 10 before slicing and baking them again. The final step, once the cookies are cooled, is to make a glaze for the biscotti out of Nutella, powdered sugar and boiling water. As you can see by the pictures, I made some drizzled with the glaze, but also left about half of them plain and I almost like them better that way even though my kids are protesting right now as I'm typing this since they liked them glazed better.

This is my favorite new biscotti recipe and I might just have to have a tin filled with those around at all times. Even my chocolate hating husband snuck a few for breakfast and loved them. I also think they look really pretty with the green pistachios poking out here and there and I'm planning to make them around Christmas time again to add to my cookie plates, but with the addition of cranberries or cherries for an even more festive look. So, all my Nutella loving friends and readers out there, I hope you'll give this recipe a try and love it as much as we did!

Nutella-Pistachio Biscotti
(adapted from Christmas-Cookies.com)
(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients:

4 large eggs, divided
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup Nutella, divided
1 cup unsalted pistachios, shelled and roughly chopped
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/4 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons boiling water

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or silpat.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together 3 eggs, 1 egg yolk (reserve the extra egg white) and 1 cup granulated sugar until well mixed. Add 3/4 cup Nutella; mix well. Gently stir in flour, salt and baking powder along with the pistachios.

Divide dough in half and form into two 12 x 2-inch logs on prepared baking sheet. Brush logs with remaining egg white and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake for 25 minutes, rotating baking sheet once after 15 minutes to ensure even baking.

Turn oven down to 300 degrees F. Remove logs from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. While warm, cut logs  width-wise on slight diagonal to form  1/2 inch-wide strips. Lay on sides on baking sheet. Bake cookies for another 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from baking sheet.

When cool, in a small bowl, whisk together remaining 1/4 cup Nutella, powdered sugar and boiling water until smooth. Drizzle glaze over cookies with fork or dip one end of each cookie into glaze. Dry at room temperature for at least 1 hour to set the glaze.

The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

For this weeks BWD: Baking with Dorie Challenge, it was Elizabeth's first pick and she decided on The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart on Page 331 and 332 in Dorie Greenspan's book

Baking: From my home to yours.

Since I've proclaimed my love for anything citrus a few times already on this blog, I was certainly excited about making it again, yes again. When I first ordered this book and it arrived over a year ago this was one of the first recipes I made. At that time I made a few notes about the tart and stuck it next to the recipe for future use.

This tart is certainly not for the faint of heart. Between the tart crust and the lemon filling, the recipe calls for a whopping 30 tablespoons of butter!!! So most definitely not a diet food, but like everything in life, if you make it only once or twice a year and have a small piece it will fit into any lifestyle.

The Lemon Cream Tart is what lemon dreams are made out of. It has crunch from the crust, tartness from the lemon and is beyond creamy from all that butter.

I started making this tart by baking the crust. Dorie suggest either her regular sweet tart dough or any variation of it. I decided to add pistachios to mine since it sounded good in combination with the lemon. In true fashion, this tart wasn't going to be my friend either. For some reason it browned quicker than my last few and almost burned. But since at this point the crust was still intact I wasn't going to bake it again. I should have known better since as soon as I placed my filling into this wonderful light and crumbly tart shell two pieces broke of the sides.

Secondly, I started working on my lemon curd. It starts by rubbing sugar with lemon zest until moist and fragrant. Into this you whisk eggs and the lemon juice. The mixture is then put over a double boiler. No matter how hard I tried the first time I made this, or even the second time, I could not get the curd to read 180 degrees F on my instant read thermometer as Dorie's recipe recommends. 160 degrees was as high as it would go and since my curd was thick and leaving tracks (another sign), I called it a day yet again and took it off the stove. Her next step is to strain the curd through a strainer and into your blender bowl, discarding the remaining lemon zest. This was another step I skipped. I love the way lemon zest adds little specks of color in a food plus my curd was nice and smooth so I figured no straining required to dirty another dish.

After letting the lemon mixture cool for a bit, you start blending in the pieces of butter. The first time I made it I used all the butter called for in the recipe, and while the flavor was OK, the family agreed the butter was too overwhelming. So this time I kept tasting after every 5 pieces and stopped at 2 sticks (16 tablespoons) of butter. Much better flavor, and the lemon was still the star in this dish.

I mentioned my crust started breaking as soon as the filling went in. I knew I had to do something to save this tart, at least for a picture opportunity. Looking through my fridge I found some cream cheese and thought that some cream cheese frosting should do the trick. So a quick frosting was whipped up and piped along the sides to contain the "leaks" and then I decided to add a quick little piping around the edges which helped disguise some of the darker edges of the crust.

I really liked this tart since it was mighty tasty and I will probably make it again sometime if I have guests, but for casual get togethers or family occasions, I will probably stick with simple lemon bars or lemon meringue pie since I really can't justify eating this much butter all the time.

Check out Elizabeth's blog and Grapefruit's blog for the recipe and to see what they thought about this Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart.

For our next BWD in two weeks (the 10th of May) it is Elizabeth's pick again with Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte on Page 240-242. So if any of this has peeked your interest and you want to join the fun with us next time, just shoot me or Grapefruit an email and we'd be more than happy to have you.