Friday, December 11, 2009

poor pekoe

snicker, snicker...




2 comments:

Lizzie said...

oh my god that's so adorable!! i love your blog so much!

regarding your comment about the cranberry pistachio biscotti that you left on my blog--i'm so glad you tried baking them all the way through because i was wondering what would happen if i did that. but seeing as yours turned out so hard, i really don't know how they are supposed to be baked. everyone else commented that i should have baked them longer, so maybe they just need to be baked for some amount of time in between my try and yours! anyway, thanks for the great comment and i look forward to reading more of your blog!

ps. i still have 2 more biscotti recipes to try out from The Book so hopefully by the time I make those I'll be able to give you a better answer.

jean said...

Hi Lizzie!
Thanks for the kind comment. I enjoyed perusing your blog(s) too! Your photos are lovely!

I tried the cranberry pistachio biscotti again last night. This time I followed the recipe to the T. Oh wait, one small change, I let the cookie log cool for about 20 minutes before I cut into it. I'd done a little research on other sites and I'm thinking that letting the cookie log cool completely might also be key. My log wasn't completely cool but it was getting close to midnight and I'm nine months pregnant and had to get up early for work in the morning.

Anyways.

I sharpened my henkels chef knife again and cut into the cookie log. I found that I had to gently zig-zag the knife back and forth to cut through the crust and the doughy uncooked middle bit. Then when the edge of the blade was through most of the log, I pushed firmly down with the knife to slice through the crustier bottom.

It was slow, careful work but I managed to slice the entire log without a hitch.

Oh, wait. But the log did break in half during one of the transfers from oven to cooling rack or something. Sigh. Happened the last time too. But I figure that this was a minor mishap.

After slicing, I tipped the slice carefully onto the blade of the knife and carried the slice onto the cookie sheet and slowly slid it out onto its side. Even with such care there were two biscotti whose ends fell off but I'm okay with that.

I baked the sliced pieces in the oven at 350 for 8 minutes and then turned the cookie sheet around and baked for another 8 minutes.

I realized last night that I flipped each cookie over after the first 8 minutes instead of flipping the cookie sheet as the instructions direct. I didn't lose any cookies from the flipping on my first go, but just to be safe, I decided to stick to the instructions.

I'm stoked with how the cookies came out. True the bottoms are darker than the tops because I didn't flip them. But they aren't rock hard (yeah!). They have that pleasant crispy bite to them and the cornmeal adds such a nice texture to the crunch. The dead center is slightly chewy. But in a good way. LOVE IT!

I took a bunch of photos but haven't had a chance to load them to my computer. I'll probably do so tonight and write up a review of my cooking experiences then.

I'm going to have to go back through your blog and check out the rest of those cookie recipes. I have the Holiday Cookies magazine which is where I got this recipe from. I've only made about a dozen of the recipes but they have all been fantastic. I should try out more of them.

I look forward to reading about your other biscotti adventures!