Oh, biscotti quite possibly my favorite Italian food, don't tell pasta I said that, or pizza or gelato...just don't tell anyone. Okay, so now that we all know that I like Italian food we can move right along. My grandpa gave my family a whole bunch of fresh white peaches, delicious! I've been making pies, cobblers, and just eating them normally, but then I thought 'HEY! I should try to make a fresh fruit biscotti!' Biscotti is a hard cookie, typically dipped into a cup of coffee. They typically have almonds, chocolate, or dried fruit. Therefore, I decided to try and make fresh peach biscotti, and biscotti with dried peaches, which Kroger didn't have so I used apricots.
I made one batch of biscotti dough and then split it in two, so the mix in amounts should be doubled if you ever make these.
The way to make the dough is super simple, first, you wanna preheat your oven to 350. Then you want to line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set it aside. So, to make the dough place 10 tablespoons of room temperature butter into an electric mixer, along with 1 1/3 cup of sugar. Cream those together, then add 3 eggs one at a time and mix after each egg. Then you want to add about 1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp. of almond extract. This will make the whole kitchen smell amazing, and your dough will smell GREAT!
Now it's time to get our dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl to where your wet ingredients are: combine 3 1/4 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 3/4 teaspoons of salt, and about 1-2 teaspoons of freshly grated nutmeg. I just kept adding nutmeg until it looked and smelled like Christmas in the kitchen. Combine all of your dry ingredients together until it's completely mixed together.
Once you've finished with your dry ingredients, slowly incorporate your dry ingredients with your wet ingredients. This will create our dense nutmeg biscotti dough.
This is where it got interesting. I split the dough in half, then I added about 1/3 cup of dried apricots and about 1/4 cup white chocolate chips in one half of my dough and mixed it thoroughly. Then I took the other half of my dough and mixed about 1/3 cup peaches (the small peach and half of a medium peach cubed) and about a 1/4 cup white chocolate chips. I gently folded this until all the components were all mixed a pretty.
I took one of my lined cookie sheets and split my dried fruit dough in half. I gently floured my hands and took one half of my dough. Then I rolled the dough out to about 6-9 inches long, then I gently pushed down the dough until it was about 1/2 an inch thick. I then repeated this with the other half.
Here's the thing about the fresh fruit dough: I started off the same way I did with the other dough, but it was too soft because of the fresh fruit. Therefore, I added some more flour until it was easy enough to roll out and flatten. After that, I popped one of the cookie sheets into the oven on the middle rack for about 25 minutes or it is golden brown. After the 25 minutes, take the cookie sheet out of the oven and cut the biscotti into pieces. Put that back into the oven for 10 minutes, then flip for another 10 minutes. Repeat the same thing with the other batch, unless you didn't make another batch.
I love biscotti just like this, however, I also love chocolate. I melted some more white chocolate and drizzled it over the top of my cookies. Let me tell you each one is absolutely delicious in their own rights. The dried fruit tastes just like a classic biscotti, and the fresh fruit is soft and almost chewy. The fresh fruit is a little sweeter than the dried fruit, and I can't tell you how good it is. I really hope that you guys like these because YUM!
