Chocolate Biscotti Made Easy...or Easily...or Whatever

A decade ago, I flew to Italy and hung out for a week.  By "hung out," I mean that I basically visited a few historic sites and ate Italian food...lots of Italian food.  It was on that trip that I discovered several delicious confections that I'll share with you in the upcoming months, including my favorite thing to dunk into coffee...biscotti.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Haven't you ever been to a coffee shop?  They've sold biscotti for well over a decade...what's wrong with you?" 

Well, here's what's wrong with me - at that stage of my life, I didn't LIKE American coffee, so I never drank the stuff on this side of the pond.  I only drank coffee when I was traveling out of the country. So I'd never had any of the stuff that usually goes with coffee, either.

Anyway...I discovered biscotti in Rome one day, and it was divine.  Crusty, crumbly, chocolatey yumminess, which got even yummier when I put it into my coffee cup.  Yes, please!!  Then something sad happened.  I flew back home, and I bought some biscotti in an American coffee shop.  It wasn't very good, to say the least, so I felt irritated for a few months, and then I decided to figure out how to make it myself.  For a few years, I tried several recipes, and this one is the easiest.  I adapted it from a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor.  It's the one that I make most often, because it's easy to throw together, and it's always a hit.  If you've never made biscotti before, but you like to have something extra with your coffee, try it and see what you think.  I promise you won't be disappointed!  

Bonus:  I have a 3 year-old daughter who loves to "help" me in the kitchen, and this recipe is perfect for kids who want to work alongside you.  

Okay, here's how it works.

Easy Chocolate Biscotti

1 package of devil's food cake mix

8 tbsp (1 stick) butter, melted

2 extra large eggs

1 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 tsp vanilla extract

Put a rack into the center of the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees.

Line your biggest baking sheet with parchment paper and set it aside.  Like this.

Dump these things into your mixing bowl...

Cake Mix 

(I like Pillsbury.  They didn't pay me to say that....in fact, they don't know I exist.  I just like their stuff.)

Butter

Eggs

Flour

Dried Cranberries 

(or whatever dried fruit you've got - if it's big, chop it up)

Vanilla

Okay, here's where I got excited and made a mistake, but I'll warn you so that you can do it correctly.  Don't put in the white chocolate yet, because it will disappear when you mix the batter.  Just wait until I tell you.

Now, mix everything (except the white chocolate) up for three minutes on low speed.

See how my chocolate chips disappeared?  Once you've mixed everything else, toss them in and mix for about fifteen seconds, or until they're just folded in.

Okay, now you dump it all out onto your baking sheet.

Then form it into a log that's about 4 inches tall and as wide as your pan will allow you to make it.  It'll be about 14 inches wide.  Mound up the middle a bit so that the middle is about two-thirds of an inch tall and the ends are about half an inch tall. 

It should look like this:

Put it into the oven and bake it for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.  

Important Note:  DON'T TURN OFF THE OVEN.  You're not done with baking yet!

Set the whole pan onto a cooking rack to cool for ten minutes.  

At this point, it will look like this:

Now, get a big serrated knife and cut slices down the rectangle on the diagonal, about an inch thick.  Do this on the baking sheet.

As you cut the slices, turn them onto their side, so that one of the cut sides is down and the other one is up.  Like this:

Now put the whole thing BACK into the oven, with the pieces all lying on their sides.

Bake the biscotti again for 10 minutes, and then turn the oven off, leaving the baking sheet and biscotti to sit in the oven for another 30 minutes.  

Then take them all out and put the biscotti onto a cookie sheet to completely cool, which takes another hour or two.

When they're done, they look like this:

Now grab a cup of coffee and eat up!