Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)

Okay, maybe not ANYTHING, but…

SOME baking can readily be reframed as either vegan or low-carb/gluten free. Not both, usually, but we do what we can, and anything wheat can do, almond can do… with a little help from its good friends Egg and Xantham gum.

February’s Avid Baker’s Challenge was a lovely orange-zested biscotti, and it was obvious that the crisp cookie would lend itself well to almond flour with no real fuss – no doubt tons of people have already tried it. Using the basic recipe that we used for ABC, we did a little tweaking and came up with something new:

Almond Flour Biscotti

3 Tbsp Butter, softened
2/3 cup granular sweetener
2 tsp Vanilla extract
2 large Eggs
2 cups Blanched Almond Flour
1 Tbsp Coconut Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 finely chopped almonds
1 Tbsp. orange zest
Preheat your oven to 350°F/180°C/ gas mark 4. Lightly grease an 18” x 13” baking sheet (or line with parchment).

Cream together butter and sweetener. Add vanilla and beat in the eggs. Next add flours, baking soda and salt, and stir in the nuts and orange zest. The original ABC recipe called for chopped dates; an optional add-in 1/3 c. chopped dried cranberries. This will be the STICKIEST biscotti dough you’ve ever encountered so wet your hands before forming it into the first bake loaf, mounded slightly higher in the center. Do make sure you mound it somewhat (more than you see in the picture there), because it will spread a bit – possibly more than you expect – and you want it to have that traditional biscotti appearance. Following Hanaâ’s lead, we scored the top of our loaves and baked for 30 minutes.

It’s advisable to cool the pan entirely after the first bake – at least twenty minutes – and lower your oven temp to 300°F/150³C/ gas mark 2. NB: Almond flour baked goods are really fragile unless cooled, so a word to the wise! Once cooled, THEN remove the cookie loaf from the pan, slice it, and lay your slices down for the second bake. Bake for 20-25 minutes, depending on how golden-brown you’d like them. After another long cooling period, you can dip or drizzle them with chocolate, which matches really well with that bitter orange zest, or enjoy them as is, with a cuppa. They’re also good with only ONE bake, if left out, as almond flour cookies will continue to crisp if left to cool in open air.

The biscotti pictured below never made it *cough* to that second bake… ah, well.

Hat tip to Pille, who reminded us we hadn’t yet posted the recipe on these!