biscotti

Before she passed, my nonna was a wild woman. She stood five feet and six inches off of the ground and weighed about as much as a very expensive vacuum cleaner. Her slight frame may have had something to do with a distinct lack of interest in baking, unlike my nonni before her; my nonna would have rather been out grabbing life by the horns than stay stuck in the kitchen, covered in flour and confectioner's sugar. One thing she did always nail around the holidays though was her famous Italian biscotti, our most treasured family recipe.

Now, if you're not aware, biscotti are coffee cookies; they are meant to be hard, so they are able to stand up in the face of all of your dunking without crumbling to bits and sinking to the bottom of your mug. I see a lot of fakes out on the market peddling biscotti that claim to be "soft-baked." Soft-baked biscotti are a mockery of everything we as Italian-Americans stand for. They miss the point entirely. You bake them twice, to make them nice.

This cookie is one that I take very seriously; we aren't playing any games here today. I made slight modifications to the original only where absolutely necessary. These things are vegan as fuck, my mom was so pissed.

one cup of rice flour

three eighths of a cup of sugar

one tablespoon of chia seeds

one quarter of a cup of coconut oil

three quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder

three quarters of a tablespoon of vanilla

a pinch of salt

three quarters of a cup of toasted almond slivers

vegan chocolate chips

Something that's useful to have totally nailed down and put aside before actually breaking ground - toasting the almond slivers. I'm terrible at toasting nuts, I'm pretty sure I have never made an attempt that didn't result at least partially in failure, this time very much included. Thankfully, I didn't fuck them up entirely. Preheat your oven to 325°. Get your chia egg rockin' and rollin'. The recipe goes on.

Cream together the oil and sugar. Toss in your dry ingredients and the almonds. Once those are combined, add the chia and the vanilla. This is going to be a very stiff dough, so just keep at it until you achieve some sort of consistency.

Got your lump? Great, I've got mine. Grease down your dirty baking sheet and form a flat loaf about an inch tall. Let it bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes and then take it out to rest for another five.

When it's cooled sufficiently, slap that giant cookie down onto your cutting board and cut it into slices, like so. Something that looks a lot nicer is cutting them on a diagonal, but I was multi-tasking and forgot. I am a never-ending example of incompetence and disappointment. That fact should not be anything shocking or new to you after all of this shared time.

When you've got your sliced cookies, pop the boys back in for another ten minutes on each side, or until the edges start to turn golden brown.

This is it. This moment is the one we've been working toward; once you've made it here, you can relax, take off your shoes, and brew up a strong pour-over. Benvenuto. Welcome to Little Italy. Prepare yourself for the dunking experience of your life.

Looking at this photo pisses me off for a lot of reasons, the most relevant one to us being the fact that I completely ruined the cookies by dipping them into some overly-runny chocolate shortly after taking it; maybe something about the vegan chocolate formula prevented them from setting properly. I don't fucking know. In the end, though, I almost prefer it this way. I am most at ease when I am constantly surrounded by things that remind me of my failures and shortcomings.

I honestly can't believe I didn't get a plated shot of these puppies while they were still naked and beautiful; they were so fucking cute before I gave them the runs. Oh, well. You live and you learn.