Chocolate and Pistachio Biscotti

Chocolate Biscotti, studded with pistachios and chocolate chips. Yum! And perfect with a coffee.

I've wanted to enter Dom, at Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipes challenge for some time, and finally this month I 've done it! The challenge involves cooking a recipe picked at random from your cookbook collection, and is a great idea as it gets you to do recipes that you might otherwise have discounted. May's challenge was to select a cookbook at random, and then you could choose between either the first or last recipe in the book.

I used my patented randomiser (aka Ben) to choose a book. Unfortunately, I don't think this was as random as might otherwise have been the case, as the selected book was 'Chocolate - 100 everyday recipes'. Knowing Ben, whose capacity for chocolate is unlimited, I suspect randomness had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, I hadn't actually cooked from the book before, and it's not one that I would have chosen, so thought why not?

The first recipe was Toffee Chocolate Puff Tarts, which sounded delicious and which I have bookmarked for the future. But we plumped for these Chocolate Biscotti.The original recipe contains toasted almond flakes and pine nuts, but as my randomiser was expecting payment in kind, we Bennified them by using pistachios instead. And the recipe also used cinnamon, which we decided against, opting to use cocoa instead to up the chocolate taste. The result was a lovely, crisp, chocolatey biscotti with lots of flavour from the pistachios (if I make them again, I may even cut the pistachios slightly - say to 80g - so they don't overpower). Anyway, here's the recipe, adapted from 'Chocolate - 100 Everyday Recipes'.

Chocolate and Pistachio Biscotti

Ingredients (makes 16)

1 medium egg
100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
125g plain flour
1/2 tspn baking powder
1 tbspn cocoa powder
50g plain chocolate chips
100g shelled pistachios

Preheat  the oven to 160 Fan / 180 Conventional / 350 C / Gas 4. Line a baking tray with baking parchment.

Whisk the egg, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until thick and creamy - it should form a ribbon if you lift the whisk out.

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into the bowl and gently fold in. Add the chocolate chips and pistachios and gently fold in until evenly distributed

Turn out onto a lightly floured worksurface and shape into a log. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet.

Bake in the middle of the oven for around 20 - 25 minutes. Remove the log from the oven and cool for 5 minutes or until firm to the touch.

Slice the log into 1cm thick slices and arrange them on the baking sheet. Cook for 10 - 15 minutes, flipping over halfway through. Cool for 5 minutes on the tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Ultimately, Ben decided that the pistachios were a nut too far for him; he would have preferred just chocolate. I suspect I may have lost the services of my randomiser. However, Mike and I enjoyed them with our favourite cappuccino, which they complemented beautifully.

Definitely worth trying.

Susie