I’m back! Well, I’ve been back for over a week and had sooooo much fun in Vegas that I needed many days to recover. Well, not really, but I did need some time to recover but the other days away from my blog were needed to get my life back in order with routine, work, and eating. Before Vegas I hadn’t gone grocery shopping since I was going away and when I got back, I jumped right into work and sleep and never made it to the store so my eating habits consisted of coffee and any Asian chicken salad I could get my hands on. When it comes to sweets, I tend to reach for a small handful of chocolate chips because I’m one of those people who have chocolate chips on hand ALL. THE. TIME. Usually, I have some dried fruit as well, as I like to mix the fruit and chocolate with peanuts. Talk about a yummy little snack. Anyway, this Chocolate-Cherry Biscotti caught my eye because it’s two-thirds of my favorite snack rolled up into one little crunchy dunkable cookie.

Chocolate chips and dried cherries are mixed into a thick cookie dough batter, flattened, baked, cut and baked again to result in these crunchy on the outside but slightly soft on the inside cookies. I’d never made biscotti before as I’m generally not the biggest biscotti fan (too crunchy) but I loooooooved these! Maybe biscotti isn’t supposed to be a little bit soft on the inside but mine turned out that way and I was hooked. The sweet chocolate and tart cherries are a marriage made in cookie heaven. On a side note, I made these on a Saturday while Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close played on the TV in the background and I ended up watching the whole movie without meaning to. Now when I think about these biscotti, I can’t NOT think about that movie. Strange how certain foods will forever remind you of something completely unrelated to food.

The ingredients:

Lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine flours and salt in a bowl; stir well with a whisk. Beat sugar and eggs with a mixer at high speed until thick and pale (about 4 minutes). Add oil and extracts, beating until well-blended. Add flour mixture, beating at low speed just until blended.

Stir in cherries and chocolate chips.

Divide dough in half; turn out onto a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Shape each portion into a 10-inch-long roll, and flatten to 1-inch thickness. Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove rolls from the baking sheet; cool 10 minutes on a wire rack. Reduce oven temperature to 325°F.

Cut each roll diagonally into 20 (1/2-inch) slices. Place slices, cut sides down, on baking sheet. Bake at 325°F for 10 minutes. Turn cookies over, and bake an additional 10 minutes (cookies will be slightly soft in center but will harden as they cool).

Remove from baking sheet; cool completely on wire rack.

Additions: None

Omissions: None

Substitutions: None

Overall Rating: Love It

Source: Cooking Light magazine