Chocolate, almond, orange biscotti

Moving house, so trying to use up as many oddments as possible. Got a huge tub of cocoa, odd flours, a load of ground almonds, a few flaked almonds and some foul orange and geranium chocolate. These were the result. Unless you really like icky geranium chocolate, I’d avoid it and use orange choc, or even just a good dark choc, and add some orange zest, if you have any oranges.

It was experimental, and I played around with it as I went along, so this just approximate.

Preheat the oven to 160C (or 140C ish fan oven).

Cream together 100g unsalted butter with 120g sugar (I used soft brown, as that’s all I had left, but other recipes  use caster or granulated).
Beat in two eggs and 60g (or 60ml if you insist) of orange juice. It curdled, but don’t worry about that.

Sieve together 100g flour (I used rice flour with some SR, but preferable to use plain), 80g cocoa and 3/4 t of baking powder.

Beat a little of the sieved mix into the creamed mix, then when it’s cleared, fold in the rest. Fold in 100g of ground almonds.

Fold in couple of tablespoons of flaked almonds (though blanced almonds, roughly chopped would be preferable), and around 60g of roughly chopped chocolate.

Divide the mixture into two, and form it into logs. Put the logs on baking sheets and bake for around 30 minutes.

Slice the loaves into pieces about 15mm thick, and put these back on the baking sheets. Bake for about 10 minutes, then turn over and bake for another 10. You’re drying out the biscuits, to make them hard and crunchy – perfect for dipping in your coffee or whatever.

Oh, and for etymology geeks, biscotti, like the English word “biscuit”, ultimately derives from the Latin bis – “twice” – and coquere – “to cook”. So, “twice cooked”. Or indeed, twice-baked.

Apologies for crappy mobile snap.

(Oh, and Jo – the title isn’t busting the line for me. If it is for you – tough! I don’t want to put “choc” instead of “chocolate”!)