You Can Take Crunchy Too Far: Gingerbread Biscotti

The decision to make some sort of biscotti for my holiday cookie boxes was an easy one, both because I love crunchy cookies and because biscotti are sturdy and keep exceptionally well. Abby Dodge's Gingerbread Biscotti seemed like a natural choice for the holidays. 

To make the dough, you combine all of the dry ingredients (flour, dark brown sugar, ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, chopped pecans, and chopped dried apricots) in a mixing bowl and slowly incorporate the liquid ingredients (molasses, eggs, and orange zest). You form the mixture into a log; bake it; let it cool slightly before slicing the log; and bake the slices until they are dry.

Dodge notes that length of the second bake will determine the final cookie texture, ranging between "slightly moist and chewy" to "super-dry and crunchy." I prefer my biscotti to be dry and crunchy, but I think I took it a little too far -- my biscotti ended up being a bit overbaked on the ends, just on the verge of being burnt. They were in fact very hard and crunchy -- and while I liked the crunch, they were so hard that they were a little challenging to eat. 

I was surprised at how intense the spice level was in these cookies. They were very gingery and spicy. So much so that I couldn't taste the apricots and the texture of the dried fruit could easily have been mistaken for candied ginger instead, and even the pecans were overshadowed by the spice. I thought the biscotti were fine, but they weren't a favorite. However, my friend Dorothy made a point of telling me that the biscotti were her older son's favorite of everything in the box of cookies they received.

Dorothy picked up her box on the first day (out of six total) I was distributing holiday cookies, and a picture of the day one box is above. The photo shows a box for a family of four; the box sizes varied with household size. In addition to the biscotti, the boxes included eggnog snickerdoodles, compost cookies, chocolate sprinkle sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and sticky ginger squares (which are hidden under the chocolate sprinkle cookies). I was pretty happy with the assortment.

Recipe: "Gingerbread Biscotti" by Abby Dodge, from Fine Cooking.