I Found the Words to Every Thought

I haven't posted anything in a while.

I have pictures from at least three baking projects on my computer or camera, but they haven't done much besides sit there.  I am finding that I would rather not post just a recipe or a picture of an outfit.  I want to have a story to tell, or a thought to offer.

I still don't have a story to go with these pictures and this recipe.

The quote in the title of this post is from an Emily Dickinson poem - I've been revisiting my lit textbooks the last couple days.  When I woke up before five o'clock yesterday morning for no reason, I had some devotion time, and then I read Dante, as one does at five in the morning. Then there was sort of a chain reaction, and now I'm posting about Emily Dickinson.

Anyway, the poem, especially the first stanza here, captures how I often feel when writing, and sometimes how I feel when speaking.

I found the words to every thought

I ever had -- But one

And that -- defies me --
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun

I don't know that I have the words for every thought, but it sure seems like I have the phrase for everything except what I actually want to say in a given moment. I have a whole host of ideas for blog posts right now, but I felt compelled to keep everything in chronological order, so the chocolate-walnut biscotti had to come first.  But I don't have words for the thought.

There's something delightfully ironic in how perfectly Emily Dickinson phrases the elusive quality of words and writing. It's hard to believe she ever had a thought she didn't eventually phrase in a uniquely compelling way. (Just for the record, though, the second stanza adds the layer of communicating with people of different background and context, and that's another thing entirely.)

I could try to make some brilliant segue here about Emily Dickinson and biscotti, but, well, I think that's another thought I have not the words to, so I'll just give you the recipe and some pretty pictures.

Brownie Biscotti
(via allrecipes.com, altered)

1 T butter (altered from 1/3 cup in recipe)
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs (altered from 2 in recipe)
1 t vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 t baking powder
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
(the recipe also called for chocolate chips, which I'm sure would have been delicious, but I didn't have any)

Preheat oven to 375

1. Cream the butter, sugar and eggs. Add the vanilla to the mixture.
2. The recipe says, as most do, to combine all the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet.  Sometimes I do that. This time I just added each individually and mixed it all up.
3. Add walnuts (and chocolate chips, if you have them!).
4. Time to make the fun logs for the first round of baking.

 

I'm trying to take slightly different pictures, since I'm sure the same picture with slightly different textures and colors is not that interesting.  Maybe I should change this feature to Biweekly Breakfast Baked Good to avoid getting too repetitive.

5. Bake the logs at 375 for 25-30 minutes.

6. Let the logs cool for about 10 minutes, then cut diagonally into slices.

7. Bake the slices for at least 20 minutes, or 10 minutes on each side if you like.

8. Now you have a brand new kind of delicious biscotti!

sugar in the morning

I don't remember a lot about junior high. Snapshots, for the most part. When I try to drudge up memories from that time period, I get an image of orange and black poms.  The sound of a bunch of 13-year-olds shouting, "Llama, llama, llama! We stand out!"  The feeling of absolute terror that accompanies forgetting the words to the national anthem at a basketball game. Counting the number of times my history teacher ended his sentences with the word, "Right?"  Watching The Matrix too many times to count while eating cheese-filled hot dogs and cosmic brownies washed down with an alarming amount of Mountain Dew.

Maybe I remember some things about junior high.

Junior high was also the time that I was in show choir.  Like Glee. Except without being absolutely ridiculous.

As I was making this week's biscotti, I kept thinking about this song that was part of our show when I was in seventh grade. 

Wouldn't you like to see the cast of Glee perform that one?

I actually...really like the song now. Plus I still remember a significant chunk of the choreography.  Flashback video blog?

Yeah, maybe not. 

Cinnamon-Sugar Biscotti
(modified from allrecipes.com)
2 cups flour
1 1/2 t cinnamon
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2/3 cup sugar
6 T butter
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
Cinnamon chips (Hershey's makes them. They are fantastic. Do not buy unless you have a use for them, or else you will eat them all plain.)

1 t cinnamon
3 T sugar

Preheat oven to 325.

1.  Mix the flour, cinnamon, and salt.
2. Cream the sugar and butter together, then beat in the eggs and vanilla
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and stir in the cinnamon chips.

So you know how I said biscotti doesn't usually have fat (oil, butter, etc.)?  Well. This one does.  And because of the butter,  when I mixed up the ingredients, it came out a lot more like cookie dough than biscotti dough, which tends to be drier and crumblier.

I think the next time I make this recipe (or stumble across another type of biscotti that uses butter), I will add an extra egg and use less butter.  The end result tastes great, but it has a strange biscookie texture.

Yay portmanteaus.

4. Shape the dough into two logs and bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes (I've found it's best to err on the higher side with biscotti).

6. Let the logs cool, and cut diagonally into strips about 1/2 inch thick.  See my first biweekly biscotti post for a visual example.

7. Mix together the 3 T sugar and 1 t cinnamon, then sprinkle it on one of the cut sides of the biscotti slices.

8. Bake at 325 for at least 20 minutes.

9. Cool and dip in coffee! (Or hot chocolate)

There you have it. Now you, too, can have sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, AND sugar at suppertime.

Though I'm not sure I would suggest it.

Biweekly Biscotti Kick-off

Last fall, I baked probably ten kinds of cookies in two months. At the time, I was in training at work, so I could just bring the cookies to class and hand them out - I made friends, and I didn't eat 4000 calories worth of cookies every day.  Win/win. 

But when I continued to make them after training, I had a problem.  I began to eat cookies for breakfast. Daily. It was not a responsible nutritional decision..

I wasn't willing to give it up completely, though, because it allowed me to continue with my newfound baking habit without excessive extraneous cookie consumption (check out that alliteration!).  Instead, I began to look for alternatives, including the homemade pop-tarts from last week. Pop-tarts, I thought, are supposed to be breakfast food - surely that's an improvement over eating cookies every morning!

They may indeed have been. But the pop-tarts took hours to make. Not the best option for a regular project, especially if I ever wanted to bake anything else.

My other morning vice is coffee. And what goes best with coffee??

I refer you to the coffee experts.

Lorelai: I ask you. What is a danish without coffee?
Rory: The eternal question springs up again.
Lorelai: There's no point in even eating a danish without coffee. Sad danish. Lonely danish.  Step danish!

Oh, wait. I didn't make danishes. Sorry, Gilmores!

What I did make was biscotti.  I have actually made four kinds of biscotti in the last month and a half, and I don't see it stopping any time soon.  So obviously, I'm going to make it into a series for my poor, direction-less blog.

Today's kick-off post features a classic variation - almond biscotti.

Almond Biscotti

(via about.com)

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups flour

3 eggs

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 cups almonds (it says whole - I used sliced, because it's what I had.)

2 tsp vanilla extract

My addition: 1 tsp almond extract

Preheat oven to 350.

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.  Including the almonds.  I forgot those until later. But it still worked.

2. Add beaten mixture of eggs, vanilla, and (in my case) almond extract.  It will be very dry.  I had to use my hands to get it all mixed.  This is partially because biscotti traditionally uses NO FAT. 

Which is why everyone should eat it for breakfast. 

3. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into two "logs." Flatten them a bit on a baking sheet, like so:

4. Bake the logs at 350 for about 25 minutes.  When they're done, let them cool for a while. (Leave the oven on.)

 Don't they look so pretty?

5. Slice the log into diagonal strips and put them flat side down on the baking sheet. This step confused me a lot the first time I made biscotti, so I took a picture of it.  

The strips in the picture are probably too thick.  I have found that they must cool completely in order to make thinner strips that don't break in half, though, and it was late, so in the interest of time, I didn't let them cool completely.

This plan ended up backfiring, because thicker strips just meant longer baking time.

6. Put the sliced biscotti back into the oven (at 350 or 325) for at least 25 minutes.  It's always taken me longer.  It's also a good idea to take them out halfway through the baking time and flip them to the other side.

Let them cool again and dip them in freshly brewed coffee!

I don't think the Gilmore girls would mind switching out their danishes for one of these every now and then, do you?