Biscotti - gluten free. Double orange and orange and chocolate

chocolate orange biscotti (cup by local potter)

I regularly make biscotti but as they keep so well I realised I hadn't tried my standard flour mix with them - I used to make it with a mix of ground almonds, urid lentils and tapioca.  So, today, pouring with rain outside and nothing else that must be done...two biscotti recipes. I am going to follow the English habit of referring to 'biscotti' as both singular and plural - in effect as if it is a biscuit name.  Any Italians, sorry.

I base my biscotti on the biscotti alla mandorle from the River Cafe Cook Book Green, by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, just swapping the flours, and adding anything else that pleases me to adjust the flavour.

Ingredients
150g whole blanched almonds, coarsely chopped
100g pine kernels
1 tsp vanilla
250g caster sugar
250g flour ( 40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
1 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
finely grated zest 2 oranges

For recipe 1 I added 100g of crystallised orange peel I made last winter.  I just chopped this coarsely and added it with the chopped almonds.

For recipe 2 I added 100g of plain chocolate drops.  I use Callebaut Belgian chocolate.  I buy it in 2.5kg bags from my local trade store, and always have the white, milk, 54% and 70.4% chocolate drops in stock. I know, that makes a lot of chocolate to keep, but it is very easy to cook with and tastes very good.



Instructions

Heat oven to 180C fan

Chop the almonds coarsely and toast for a few minutes in the oven with the pine kernels to a toasty golden.  Watch out you don't let them burn, and tip them onto a cool dish when you take them out of the oven or they may overcook from the residual heat  in the tin.  Let them cool.  If you forget to do them first you can speed up the cooling by putting them in a large metal bowl in a tub of iced water.

Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder together.   Mix the wet ingredients (including zest) and add to the dry ingredients.  You will have to work quite hard to get them to mix- probably easier in a mixer but for some reason I have always done this by hand.

Mix in the (cooled) nuts and kernels.  Mix in the chopped crystallised peel or chocolate drops.

Shape into two long thin logs and place on a buttered sheet or preferably on a silicon sheet.

logs - first baking

Cook for 15 minutes until the dough is setting.  If it is too gooey to cut neatly put back in the oven for a few minutes.

Remove from the oven and cut into whatever size pieces you want.  I tend to make these quite small as normal store-bought biscotti size is too big for us when made with such rich ingredients.

The chocolate tended to smear when cutting.  If this will bother you try leaving the dough after this first setting until fully cooled and the chocolate has re-set.  I think if you then slice and re-bake you will get neat chocolate biscotti.  Anyone tried this?

Place back in the oven on their sides and bake for another five minutes, turn, and bake again.

slices - second baking

They should be lightly browned.  You can take them out earlier if you like a chewier biscotti, but we like them quite crisp, and it means they keep very well.

biscotti- double orange

biscotti -chocolate orange

Keep in an air-tight tin.  They last for months.  They make good handbag emergency food as they don't go off quickly when carried around for a few days, and the high protein content makes them satisfying.