Today let's start with the biscotti. I did almond and cranberry biscotti last year and they were everyone's favourite thing in the present so I decided to do another biscotti this year but I wanted to do a completed different flavour. I perused my recipe books and the internet for hours looking for flavour inspiration. As we have just had a baby and so don't have quite as much money as usual to spend on ingredients I had to be a bit careful of what I chose- there were some wonderful sounding recipes but for the quantity I was making, the ingredients would have cost a fortune. Then I came across this recipe. The picture of them looked fantastic and I loved how instead of just being cocoa for the chocolate, there were also dark chocolate pieces inside and the biscotti was also flavoured with a little bit of coffee and cinnamon. This recipe isn't actually vegan due to the eggs and butter but I used an egg replacer and vegan margarine in place of these. I also didn't glaze them with anything before cooking- they really didn't need it. I trialled all my recipes a week before making them for the gifts to make sure I liked them and to see if any adjustments needed to be made. When I tasted these I was a little disappointed that the cinnamon didn't come through very well and I couldn't taste the coffee at all. I decided to take out the coffee and double the cinnamon and when I tried them again they were perfect.
From the picture in the recipe it showed the biscotti with drizzles of white icing on. I really wanted to carry on the chocolate theme and didn't have any white chocolate to hand to make a contrasting icing so instead I did a dark chocolate one from this recipe (subbing the butter for vegan margarine instead). I tried to pipe the icing on a little like in the picture but I didn't have a thin enough piping insert so instead I coated one side in the icing. It didn't look quite as impressive (thinner piping bag insert is now on my shopping list for next time) but it took these biscotti to another level in taste! With a little creativity and time (four recipes in one day with a baby was very hectic!) I am sure these could have been made more pretty even without piping.
These biscotti are not difficult to make and really impressive as a vegan gift or as after dinner biscuits with coffee. I have had lots of compliments on these and many have asked for the recipe- so here it is!
**I either can't find my photos of these or I completely forgot to take them. Check out the images in the recipe though as they look very similar to how mine turned out minus the icing. Sorry!**
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