Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

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Hazelnuts are pretty expensive nuts, just like pecans and pine nuts. That’s why it is something I never buy. The only times I have bought some pecans were to bake these cookies and these ones too and I treated it like gold.  I buy pine nuts only when I know I have to be using it for some recipe, and that too, I buy so little that I invite a stupid look from the fellow at the counter. 😀

It so happened that I was walking towards the vegetable aisle when a box of hazelnuts stared at me. I looked at it, wishing I could buy it and then looked at the price. I re-looked at it again. And again. And again. I couldn’t really believe my eyes. The next thing that happened was that the box landed up straight into the trolley. Once the box reached home, since I had no immediate plans to do anything with it, I placed it directly into the freezer. I then conveniently forgot about its existence till recently.

I pulled out the box and roasted all the hazelnuts. Majority of it went into making some homemade “Nutella”, which I will share sometime later, InShaAllah. The rest were packed into a box, with me thinking of doing a cake or muffins or cookies. Finally I landed up making some biscottis, since I was craving to bake some since long.

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I don’t think I need to mention how delicious the combination of chocolate and hazelnuts are. When I used to eat a lot of chocolates, mine would always be the one with hazelnuts – this one being my favorite, which I could eat the whole in one sitting! This biscotti was just as good as the chocolate hazelnut bars! I made mine double chocolate, ie. with cocoa powder in the dough as well as bites of dark chocolate in between, intermingling with the bites of hazelnuts – bliss!

I adapted the recipe from here, but the way of making it was inspired by Martha Stewart. I had taken the Netflix one month free subscription, which I cancelled as soon as it closed onto one month because it was so addictive! Especially at night when I was supposed to be sleeping after a long day, I would just watch series after series and then waste almost an hour of my sleep time. 😕 Actually, my thought of baking biscottis was pushed when I watched an episode of Martha Bakes where she was baking with chocolate. While making the biscotti, she had made the dough in the food processor, and that meant I didn’t have to do any extra chopping or cutting, and didn’t have any other bowl to wash. 😉

The only problem with biscotti is the double baking – so you need to be patient till you can take in a bite. These were amazing with a cup of no-sugar strong black coffee. I can’t stress enough on that. One glug of coffee, one bite of the biscotti and you are in foodie heaven. 😀 It was really amazing. If you do land up with some hazelnuts on special price like I did, then I urge you to make these – ASAP!

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5 from 8 votes

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

Course Snack

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 25 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Rafeeda

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup hazelnuts roasted and deskinned (refer notes)
• 75 gm cooking dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 medium eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp milk

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Line a tray with baking paper and keep ready.
• Add ingredients from hazelnuts to salt in a food processor. Blitz for a couple of minutes, just till combined.
• Add in the eggs, vanilla and milk, and blitz till the dough comes together.
• Sprinkle some cocoa powder and put the dough in it. Bring it together till smooth and then shape into a log.
• Transfer to the tray and bake for 30 minutes.
• Take out, transfer carefully to a cooling rack and cool for 15 minutes.
• Slice into biscotis and keep on the tray. Bake each side for 7 minutes.
• Cool completely. Enjoy with a cup of coffee and keep rest in an air tight container.

Notes

To roast and de-skin hazelnuts, preheat oven to 150 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts on a sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Take out and empty the roasted hazelnuts into a kitchen towel. Roughly rub them for the skin to come off. Take off the deskinned hazelnuts. A few with skin is fine, though too much would cause bitterness.

Linking it to Valli’s Bake-a-thon 2018 event, in which you are going to see 13 chocolate treats from my side…

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