The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap – Recipe Time!
The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011 - the first year of this cookie swap devised by Lindsay of Love and Olive Oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen - is now coming to an end! Today is the day we post our cookie recipes and link them all up at Lindsay's and Julie's link party and we wash our hands of it. But it was so much fun! They promise us there will be another next year - I sure hope so. This one was wildly popular - I think the end count of sign-ups was over 600 and although they originally planned it to be open to the US and Canada only, it ended up being in several other countries too - I don't have all the stats but I'm sure Lindsay or Julie will post them. This was one impressive swap!
Christmas Cookie Times: Chocolate-Dipped Vanilla Walnut Biscotti
For the first of my Christmas cookies series - Better-than-Starbucks' Ginger Molasses Cookies - click here. So, I uploaded these pics, deleted the ones I didn't like, and then chose the one above - my favourite - and now that I see it in large size I see it's blurry! Aaahhh I hate when that happens but I've eaten ALL of the biscotti now - (I DID make them a couple of weeks ago in my defense), and I have so many more cookie recipes to try before Christmas. SO, I doubt I'll get to them again... I hope, then, that a good recipe is a decent exchange for a crappy photo? Sorry! These chocolate-dipped biscotti make a GREAT gift to give someone, because they last really well. Of course the meaning of biscotti (think bi-scotti) means twice-cooked, so the secret to the crunchiness of biscotti is cooking them twice. Actually, because on the second round of cooking you have to cook each side you’re really baking them three times. But it’s worth the wait! Biscotti last up to 2 weeks in an airtight container stored at room temperature, and I made 20 out of my batch. They're great for dipping in coffee or tea as they soften up nicely in the liquid and make a great accompaniment. You can get them really crumbly like the ones they serve at Starbucks, but these ones still have a slight softness to them and I prefer that myself. Although they are twice cooked, so it does take a bit longer to make them, they are super easy and if you have kids the chocolate-dipping part is lots of fun!