Basket full of Biscuits and Almond Biscotti "deliciousness"...

Good afternoon everyone! I hope your Thursday was as tasty as mine was. Before I go into today's details I just want to thank everyone who is reading and commenting. I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.  I enjoy your feedback and your questions; its the fuel to my fire. As I mentioned in the beginning, I love to share. Sharing is an amazing gift that each and every one of us is capable of  doing. :) 

With that in mind, we made some yummy flaky biscuits today. As you can see, there were a lot of layers in the biscuits.  I made these today with my partner Andrea. :) I am so glad we shared the task as we would have been overloaded with biscuits, not that overload is a problem ;). I have been MEANING to go to the store and get Tupperware to bring all these treats  home.  As of now, I can only hold so much! I promise tasters, Tupperware is on the way! ** The key to flaky biscuits is to have peanut size fat when kneading into your flour. **  Its the same as making pie dough. If you want it flaky, leave the same amount of fat in your mix vs your usual corn"mealy" texture. 

Quick tip of the day: when biscuits bake in the oven, the fat melts, creating a steam that gives you those wonderful layers you see pictured. They look great and they taste heavenly!

As if that was not good enough, we cut our biscotti today.  I baked the cut pieces again for 5 minutes, each side.  The result was an amazingly tasty treat.  Really, Coffee is a must to truly enjoy, but alone they are divine!  I will throw the recipe in here near the end of the blog if you want to give it a try. Remember, patience and time with these babies.  These are WELL WORTH it.  I am not a fan of hard biscotti, although that is their texture. I personally like them slightly softer.

It was an awesome day. It ended with learning about pathogens and viruses... wow!! As much as I enjoy my techniques class, I really am jaw-dropped with food borne illnesses and how they can affect and even kill you. Its so crazy how something so simple, WASHING YOUR HANDS, can be so overlooked. It's not cute people. I cant stress it enough, please wash your hands. Normally common sense will tell you when you are cross-contaminating something in a kitchen and if you don't know, you can learn. But its pretty gross to see what we carry on our hands when working around food. Ick is all I can say...

I wont leave it on that yucky note, I will in turn leave you with this!

Recipe for you!

Almond Biscotti

5 oz of egg
9 oz of Sugar
.25 oz of salt
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp Orange Zest ( or more) :)
14 oz Pastry flour
.35 oz of baking powder
5 oz sliced almonds

Combine your egg, sugar and salt in a bowl, use the steam from the double broiler to mix, then whip until its thick and light
Fold in your vanilla and orange zest
Add your sifted dry ingredients (flour and baking powder)
Fold in your egg mixture
Mix in your almonds
Create the dough into a log, brush a little egg wash on top,
Cook at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes.
Let cool, cut the biscotti in pieces and bake again for 5 minutes, each side, at 275 degrees.

Enjoy!