Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!!

In the spirit of Christmas, I baked something that I've always wanted to. It is snowing outside and the wind was blowing so hard in the direction of our home that the snow has piled up deep and high on our driveway. Everywhere around is a sea of pure white snow. The trees are dripping icicles and the lake is frozen solid. In this pristine landscape, I can spot some hoof prints of the deer that have run around foraging for food. Inside, the house is toasty warm and the aroma of baking is starting to percolate.

Today, I decided to try out the Almond Biscotti recipe I found on the Smitten Kitchen site. Until now, I have tried making these biscottis using various recipes I have found on the web, but have never been satisfied with the result. So, we've always settled for buying these biscottis either from Costco or Sam's or at the very expensive Starbucks.

I have to say though, that I received high praise for these Biscottis from my most honest critic, my husband! He said it was even better than the store bought Biscottis. My neighbors, who were the recipients of my Christmas largess, enjoyed these Biscottis too.

I tweaked this recipe a bit. I baked two batches of these biscottis. For the first batch, I followed the instructions exactly. But the logs were a bit undone when baked for 30 minutes and it was hard to slice them because the slices crumbled.

The second time around, I baked the logs for an additional 3 minutes, baking them for a total of 33 minutes.

In addition, I pan roasted the almonds, instead of following the instructions in the recipe. I also hand-pounded them coarsely, using my mortar and pestle because I wanted bigger chunks of the almonds.

You can either follow the instructions as listed in the Smitten Kitchen site or tweak them using my tips. Deb, the cook from Smitten Kitchen says that she got nearly 45 biscottis from this recipe. I got 32.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! AND A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!