Gingerbread Biscotti – The Choice is Yours

by sweetenuf | Feb 7, 2014 | Cookies and Biscotti

I have been craving a Gingerbread Biscotti for a while now.  During the Christmas holidays when the urge for a Gingerbread biscotti strikes you just need to pop into a Starbucks, wait in line for 25 minutes and drop $10 for your fancy beverage and your cellophane wrapped treat.

Now that all the Christmas charge cards have arrived and strapped you of any extra cash it’s back to homebrewed coffee and memories of gingerbread biscotti.  So after looking for a recipe for these yummy cookies, I narrowed it down to 2 (well 2 for now, maybe next month I might try another GB one).  One is from Joy the Baker’s site and the other is a very similar recipe but is made with applesauce.  I will post both recipes so you can choose which you one you prefer.  Today I will post my adaption of Joy’s recpe.

For Joy’s recipe she called for 1 cup of oatmeal, wanting you to grind 1/2 cup of it to make an oat flour, but since that was an extra step and I’m all about quick and easy and yummy, I just used 1/2 cup oatmeal and added another 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour in.  Both recipes call for cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and molasses although in varying amounts.  So I added a little more cinnamon in both as that is what I prefer.  For Joy’s recipe I toasted up the walnuts before hand to bring out the flavour.

For Joy’s recipe I added another egg and a little more molasses as I found the batter very dry and hard to form together.  It reminded me of a recipe I tried a few times from Fine Cooking.   I could  never get the batter to form the logs so that recipe hit the trash.  Adding the egg and a little more molasses made a huge difference in having the dough come together to form the logs.

I was skeptical of the biscotti recipe with applesauce but it came together super quick and although in it’s description mentions the dough will be crumbly that wasn’t the case at all.  When forming the sticky dough into logs I dipped my hands into cold water to prevent it from sticking to my hands.  This works for your Rice Krispie treats as well.

For the applesauce recipe I also drizzled them with some melted white chocolate which always garners extra points for any treat in my books.

I know which recipe I prefer and I will definitely be making it again.

Remember if you don’t like your biscotti ‘Break A Tooth Off’ hard then just bake them a couple minutes less on each side.  They will taste as delicious but not be as difficult to eat.  So below is my first Gingerbread Biscotti posting and soon I will post the other recipe.

And if your counting calories these work out to about 160 calories apiece so they certainly can be worked in to your day.

Gingerbread Biscotti (Adapted from Joy the Baker)

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper and set aside.

3/4 cup walnuts or pecans or hazelnuts, toasted and coarsley chopped

1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats

1 cup all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup dark brown sugar,  packed

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cloves

3 large eggs

1/3 cup molasses

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla

In the bowl of your electric mix combine the oats, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda and spices.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, molasses, oil and vanilla extract.  With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Mix in the chopped nuts just until blended throughout the dough.  You may wish to do this with your hands.

Transfer 1/2 the dough onto the prepared sheet and shape it into a log, about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide.  Add the other half of the dough to the prepared sheet and shape it the same.

Bake for about 25 minutes at 350F.  Remove from oven and let cool for 10-15 minutes.  Turn down over to 300F.  Slice the biscotti and return to oven for about another 5-8 minutes (depending on how dry you prefer them) and flip them over and bake on the other side for 5-8 minutes.  Let cool.