I made a batch of these this past weekend to send back to Seattle for my friend Trella and I know she loves dark chocolate and having made these before, I knew they’d be perfect for her.
This recipe for biscotti is quite different from the MSBH’s recipe for Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti. The Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti is made somewhat like a meringue – no butter at all, just eggs beat with sugar. As a result, they’re much more airy and light and they dry out much more quickly during the second bake.
Here are my hazelnuts after blanching.
All the dry ingredients are pulsed in the food processor, including the hazelnuts and the chocolate chunks.
The sugar and eggs are beat until the mixture holds a ribbon when the whisk is just lifted up.
The resulting dough is very sticky and unmanageable. I’ve made this recipe dozens of times and the dough always turns out unruly. I’ve added some additional flour in past attempts and it does help a lot but it takes away from the airy quality of the resulting biscotti. I guess it’s just whatever you prefer. The dough is not very attractive at this point, regardless!
The formation and cutting of the individual cookies is the same as for Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti, so refer to that post if you’re curious.
Once baked, I melted a 1:1 combination of semi-sweet and unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler and brushed a thin layer onto the top of each individual biscotti. I then sprinkled them with finely chopped hazelnuts. The MSBH simply suggests sprinkling sanding sugar on top before baking, but I wanted to do something a little prettier.
The topping probably renders these too messy for dipping in coffee, but they should be dunked in something as they’re so crunchy on their own.
Fabulous – dense and not too switch.