one for the cookie jar

Just a quick post to share a new cookie recipe that I came across and can’t get enough of! What you see above are “Biscotti Bites,” from a recent issue of Martha Stewart Living. And they are ingenious!

The cookies make very clever use of equal parts flour and cornmeal to achieve that twice-baked crispiness of traditional biscotti without the need for (a) two trips through the oven; or (b) a perilous slicing episode in-between (or at least perilous if you know me and knives…) You can see the effect that the cornmeal has on the crunchy texture of the cookie better here:

Of course, because I’m me, I can’t follow the recipe as written. So I did the following:

–substituted orange zest for grapefruit zest because I loooove orange and chocolate together;

–made the cookies using a tablespoon-sized scoop instead of a teaspoon-sized scoop because if I’m going to have a cookie, I’m going to have a cookie! (This leads to about 40-45 cookies instead of the 100 that the original recipe quotes, and increases the baking time to about 22-25 minutes instead); and

–reduced and changed the amount of chocolate called for the recipe. “11 ozs” is not a very convenient amount when chocolate usually comes in 4-oz bar increments. So for the cookie dough itself, I used 4 oz (1 bar) of bittersweet chocolate and for the chocolate dip at the end, I used 4 oz (1 bar) of semisweet chocolate because that’s what I had available. This proved to be sufficient amounts for both steps of the recipe – they are plenty chocolate-y!

I can’t rave about these cookies enough. The texture is both crisp and chewy (thanks to the coconut) and the combination of flavors from the chocolate, orange, coconut, as well as the cornmeal, make these unique. Just be sure to abide by the directions to refrigerate the dough/cookies at each step – it really does make a difference in the final product.

Andrew and I have already been brainstorming different combinations…lime with white chocolate and coconut? I told you I couldn’t leave the recipe alone!