Moody Biscotti

Ok, so gingerbread? Smells really great. I baked some gingerbread biscotti this morning, and the house smelled like yummy holiday goodness for hours and hours.

I am uninitiated in the ways of biscotti. I tried it years ago and found it hard and almondy, neither of which I appreciate in a cookie, so I think it's possible I only tried it the one time. But my good friend Patsy came over this morning, and she and sugar don't so much get along these days, so I was looking for a not-super-sweet recipe to try. This one came up in the "diabetic" section of allrecipes.com but did not involve any bizarre sweeteners not already in my pantry, so I gave it a shot.

Turns out I sort of like biscotti.

I followed the recipe (here) pretty much exactly, a rarity for me. But when I don't know what I'm doing, I like to follow the rules.

I took a couple of pictures because...I don't know. Pictures are nice. But perhaps this is a good spot to say that I am not one of those mommybloggers who has a high-end camera and a high-end, light-filled kitchen. When I bake it doesn't look like a Martha Stewart spread, with artfully scattered flour surrounding mounds of fluffy dough in color-coordinated stoneware bowls. It's a real kitchen, and I'm a semi-reformed slob, so don't judge me. :)






I did take a couple of pictures of one of the biscotti on a coffee cup, just b/c it looked really pretty, but for some reason these shots turned out all dark and moody and weird. It was almost uncomfortably bright in the dining room. Go figure.



I had to lighten this one like crazy to even show the table and wall in the background...otherwise it was just floating in a black sea of nothing.



Anyhow, the moody pictures are maybe appropriate, b/c the biscotti themselves had kind of a spicy, dark quality to them. Also: I now understand why people dunk them in coffee. They're much, much better that way. If it weren't almost midnight I'd be trying the leftovers in a cup of cocoa, just for kicks.

I sent a few home with Patsy, and then I gave some to the woman who did the closing for our refinance, but I still have a whole mess of them. I'm thinking of dipping them in white chocolate and bringing a few to some neighbors. We'll see.

In other news, Mark had a flat tire IN OUR DRIVEWAY today, and I wasn't able to get to it to change it. However, Rick and Patsy may let me change their spare tomorrow morning...