Vanilla Pistachio Biscotti

A few weeks ago I bought a couple bags of pistachios while they were on sale. While I’m a fan of the salted variety for out of hand eating, I accidentally grabbed an unsalted bag as well. After I’d devoured the salted bag and was searching through my cupboards for a late-night snack, I decided that the unsalted kind had to be better than nothing at all.

While munching I noticed some particularly strong notes of vanilla. I had a few dozen batches of cookies to bake for people on the horizon, so I started thinking of ways to incorporate the unsalted green nuts into some sort of cookie – like vanilla pistachio biscotti.

I’d never made biscotti before, but had been meaning to for quite some time – perfect opportunity. Plus, since I was baking for other people I could experiment to my heart’s content and get the waistline-burgeoning results out of my house (not something I can say for the batch of cinnamon rolls I baked last night and am currently devouring).

Every recipe I came across also incorporated cranberries or chocolate, but I wasn’t interested in distracting from the nutty vanilla flavor I wanted. I eventually settled on altering one of Tyler Florence’s recipes and I think it turned out pretty well.

I wanted to amp up the vanilla flavor as much as possible, so I also used vanilla sugar. Vanilla sugar is one of my favorite baking secrets for sneaking some extra flavor into goodies without too much effort. Many recipes call for scraping the seeds out of a vanilla pod, but there’s still so much flavor left in there – it’d be a shame to discard it, especially considering how expensive they are. Instead, fill up a jar with sugar and stick the “spent” pods in there. Over time it will perfume the sugar with a lovely, subtle vanilla flavor. I just use an old spaghetti sauce jar (that’s been thoroughly cleaned, of course) and refill it with sugar every time I use some.

If you don’t have vanilla sugar then just use regular, I can guarantee the biscotti will still be delicious.

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

I'm just going to apologize right now.

Put away your bathroom scale. Break out the fat pants with the elastic waistband.

These cookies are going to rock your world.

Last time I was in Florida my sister made these cookies. She's a genuine badass in the kitchen when it comes to cookies, but this time she even outdid her normally awesome self.

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Snickerdoodles

What not to love about snickerdoodles? Starting with the name it's all uphill from there. How much better can you get than putting 'snicker' and 'doodle' right next to each other?

I've loved snickerdoodles for as long as I can remember. It probably started with the name, after all, this appreciation started when I was a little kid. And I know I'm repeating myself, but honestly - snickerdoodle! A person could never get tired of saying it, let alone a precocious little kid like I was.

I still think there's few cookies that beat it, although this is from a person who's really not too keen on sweets. I would most definitely pick a humble little snickerdoodle over a triple-chocolate-fudge-peanut-butter-caramel-crunch cookie, or whatever crap they're coming up with in cookie kingdom these days.

I think next time I whip up a batch of these tasty morsels I'll add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the dough. I really enjoy the cinnamon-sugar coating and think it could only get better with a hint if cinnamon in the dough too.

Also, though it's not something I've found a lot of, I used unbleached white whole wheat flour in the dough. It worked perfectly and I'd much rather use King Arthur's than some bleached-to-hell supermarket brand flour. Just remember when you're measuring flour, to not pack it in, use another cup to pour it into your measuring cup, then level it off with a knife. If you're still not sure what I mean by that, watch this movie from Gourmet. It's really quite shocking the difference in weights.

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