Dark Glacé Cherry Biscotti

I trust that if you look at a word carefully enough, it should unlock its meaning.

 First chop the word, here we have "bis" meaning twice followed by "cotti": cooked, therefore biscotti literally means "twice cooked". 

So can someone tell me why did I bake these biscotti once only? worse I went on to complain that they were too soft and the recipe didn't quite work. Not funny. 

I first encountered biscotti, age 6. My dad had a military service pal who went on opening a biscotti factory. The man had a son, age 7. To this day, I am not sure what I liked most as we drove towards Provence. Was it that I would meet again the son whom I adored or that I would be allowed to all the biscotti I could eat.

Forward to February 2014, I was invited to a Valentine's day baking session organised by French Glacé Cherry,  which I wasn't able to attend but the invitation bought back floods of memories, including the incident of "the eye of the needle".

When in Provence we would blend in with the family which happened to be keen cavers. My parents were far from but they are polite folks so when they got invited to go caving they agreed.

The ins and outs are slightly blurred, all I remember was the humiliating moment when half my body went through what seemed like a ridiculously small opening, but the bottom half got stuck and someone shouted "too many biscotti."

I learnt my lesson and never went caving again. 

Dark Glacé Cherry Biscotti

Ingredients

75g French Glacé Cherries
225g self-raising flour
Zest of 1 orange
75g whole almonds, roughly chopped
100g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
50g slightly salted butter, melted and cooled

Method

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 35 minutes
Makes: about 24

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan 170°C, 375°F, gas mark 5.
2. Place the self-raising flour in a bowl and the orange zest, sugar, almonds and French glacé cherries.
3. Beat together the eggs and butter. Add to the flour and mix to a dough. Turn out onto the surface and cut in half.
4. Shape each half into a log 24 cm long. Space well apart on a greased baking sheet and flatten each until about 7cm wide. Bake for 20 minutes.
5. Leave to cool for 20 minutes then cut each piece using a serrated knife into about 12 slices. Space the biscuits slightly apart and return to the oven for a further 15 minutes.
6. Serve with espresso or a sweet wine.

For a long time after the "cave incident" I was not able to look at biscotti the same way but failure had its silver lining and after making a fool of myself yet again around biscotti, at least I try to read the recipes to the end. So for these reasons, I am entering this recipe in the Summer 17 Inheritance Recipes, a challenge co-hosted with Coffee and Vanilla

Disclaimer: Recipe from French Cherry Glace website reproduced with authorisation.