Paleo Biscotti I hear you say?! Yup Paleo Biscotti!
The wonderful people over at Real Foods UK send me out some Amisa Organic Chestnut Flour to have a little play with. I sat there and deliberated over what I could make and I had a few ideas, gnocchi, the obvious castagnaccio and well biscotti. I’d never made biscotti before so I thought why the hell not!
If you don’t know what biscotti is well, it is simply a big chunky (but light) twice baked Italian biscuit – ‘bis‘ meaning twice and ‘cotti‘ meaning cooked. Pretty simple hey! You may have also heard of them being referred to as cantuccini which I think simply mean ‘coffee bread’ but don’t quote me on that.
The first batch I made didn’t pass my dip test well enough as I was too impatient as I didn’t wait for them to cool enough before slicing them and baking them again. Definitely follow the instructions or else you’ll end up with a crumbly or squishy mess and that’ not nice. I also used macadamia nuts first time around but decided that they weren’t Chrimbofied enough so I opted for hazelnuts in the end but both were delicious!
When I was much younger (ok I am only 30 now but still) I was never bothered too much about things like Biscotti. I preferred to have a coffee loaded full of syrup, coffee creamer and whipped cream, oh and those dreadful ‘spice’ sprinkles in Starbucks – I was a dirty consumer.
Now however I appreciate the finer things in life – a little bit of crunchy wholesome goodness that I can dip into my coffee and not make a mess with. Splendid!
Makes: 6-8 Biscotti (dependent upon how big you slice them!)
Preparation Time: 1hr 45 minutes (mainly cooling time)
Cooking Time: 35-45 minutes
Please note that all cup measurements used are British cups and equal to 250ml.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup raw honey
1 1/4 cup Amisa chestnut flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 tbsp almond butter
Zest 1 orange
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tbsp mixed spice
1 egg
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of Himalayan pink salt
50g hazelnuts or macadamia nuts (preferably activated)
Method:
- Pre-heat your oven to 180C.
- Place all of your ingredients, except for your nuts, into a food processor and blitz until the texture of sticky rice grains.
- Chuck in the nuts and pulse until you have a combination of some roughly chopped nuts and little bits.
- Remove the mixture and form into a ball of dough.
- Line a baking sheet with baking parchment and form your dough ball into a rectangle roughly about 6″x4″ and 0.5″ thick.
- Place into the oven on the middle shelf and leave to bake for 15-20 mins until golden brown all over. Remove from the oven, place on a wire rack and leave to cool completely. This could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Once completely cooled slice 1-1.5cm wide slices, horizontally. You can do this lengthways too but it will be sturdier the smaller that it is. For a more authentic look cut diagonal slices!
- Place the slices face down (the uncooked bits) back on your lined baking sheet in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. Flip over half way through to get an even bake. Remove when lovely and golden brown and crisp allover.
- Leave to cool completely on a wire wrack. You can place them back into a warm oven that has been turned off if you wish to get them even crisper without burning them.
You can buy a 350g bag of Amisa Chestnut Flour from Real Foods UK for £4.99!
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Website: http://www.realfoods.co.uk/
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