Chocolate and Almond Biscotti

Since so many of you asked, here's the recipe for my holiday biscotti. This was created from several other recipes and I still make little adjustments along the way. 

Before you set off on your biscotti baking journey - be warned - you will need a good portion of the day set aside, and another night if you plan to drizzle them with chocolate...which is totally worth it. But seriously, this is a commitment.... and don't try to rush anything.

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 cups of blanched whole almonds
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
7/8 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips for biscotti
2 cups of semisweet or dark chocolate for drizzle (optional)
1/4 cup unsalted butter - softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of whiskey... or more 

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toast the almonds in a shallow pan for 12-15 minutes, shaking the pan a few times until the almonds are lightly colored. Set aside to cool.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with aluminum foil, shiny side up. 

3. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar. Place 1/2 cup of these dry ingredients into a food processor. Add about half a cup of the toasted almonds and process for 30 seconds. 

4. Return the mixture to the bowl of dry ingredients and stir in the remaining almonds and chocolate chips. In a large measuring cup, beat the eggs, vanilla and whiskey with a fork to blend. Stir into the dry ingredients until moistened. Add the butter in slices. (You can also use a heavy duty mixer for this).  With your hands wet, divide the dough into 4 batches. Form each quarter into strips about 9 inches long, 2 inches wide and about 1/2 inch high. Round the ends of the dough and place two strips crosswise on each cookie sheet. 

5. Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven. If you're baking more than one at a time you need to rotate the sheets mid way through to ensure it cooks evenly. 

6. Using a metal spatula, remove the slabs from the cookie sheets and let them cool (warm to the touch) for about 20 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 275 degrees.

7. With a serrated knife, slide the slabs at an angle about 1/2 inch wide. Place the slices cut side down onto the cookie sheets. 

8. Bake 25 - 30 minutes in the preheated oven until the biscotti is lightly toasted. 

9. Turn off the oven and leave the door open until the biscotti has cooled, about 30 minutes. 

10. Store in an air tight container.

FOR THE CHOCOLATE DRIZZLE:
There are many ways to melt chocolate. The best way is using a double boiler. If you don't have one you can just use a small saucepan and a metal bowl that fits snug on top of the saucepan.

Fill the sauce pan with hot water from the tap. Make sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl you place on top of the sauce pan. Heat the sauce pan over LOW heat until it begins to simmer. Then put the metal bowl on top. Make sure the chocolate is chopped up into little pieces so it melts evenly. Stir gently until the chocolate is consistently smooth and shiny. If you need to thin the chocolate out, I've had success with Crisco Shortening. This helps a lot with thinning it out, depending on the type of chocolate you're using. 

Lay the biscotti out on wax paper and make sure they're evenly spaced out. If the biscotti's touching ends the chocolate won't drip down on the sides. 

Using a spoon, drizzle the warmed chocolate over the biscotti in a consistent pattern. Let the chocolate cool and dry before packaging the biscotti in an air tight container. 

Flooring 101

When we moved here the entire first floor of our house was covered in a nice off-white carpet. It was glorious. It looked so peaceful and spacious... like a soft blanket of snow had just landed in my house and made all the clutter go away. It was absolutely magical.

That was until I learned the only way to keep it that way was to regularly vacuum foot traffic, steam clean cat puke, and remind our guests to remove shoes on a daily basis. Let's just say when we had guests over all I could think about was when that first glass of red wine that was going to christen the floor. (I would like to thank my friend DeeDee for taking care of that so promptly.)  

Admittedly, I was a bit neurotic. But you would be too if everytime you came home your eyes scanned the rooms for the next spot before you took off your jacket and settled in. I was obsessed with keeping the carpet impossibly spottless. I was turning into Mommy Dearest - scrubbing and steaming until the floors bared no trace of human inhabitation. If the vacuum lines weren't on the carpet it was time to vacuum again. Get the point? So here we are now.

My Nesting Affliction

If nesting is when you physically cannot stop changing your house around because you can't go into your studio to paint, well then I'm in full blown nesting mode. Others may call this "withdrawal". Either way, here is one result of this affliction I am suffering from.

Another piece of furniture was attacked by me and a paintbrush. This one took some time though. I had to remove the glass, sand the inside AND outside, remove the shelves and repeat the same process for those. It was worth the wait. I also changed the paint color (3 times) after painting the entire piece of furniture before selecting this blue color, which happens to be the same color in our kitchen and where the hutch currently resides. I just used leftover paint. Too bad we bought 2 other new colors I need to repurpose... which you will see soon.

New Gym - No excuses

Well, we did it! We bought a treadmill and then a bunch of other stuff to pull some gym space together in our basement. Our "plan" (and I use this term loosely) is to use this space to cut back on gym commute time and monthly costs from the traditional gym. Hopefully when the winter hits we'll be down here more often. Right now it's gorgeous outside so we don't spend a lot of time in the basement. That said, the best part about this gym was designing it!

We painted first since the floor would be covered anyway. I went with a really intense orange color to keep energy levels up when we're working out.

Please note: this color was most likely selected due to subliminal messaging coming from pandora radio earlier in the week. They have Home Depot commercials after every other song and guess what color this almost matches.. (sigh).

Then we picked a floor. I wanted something that would be durable, replaceable, and not overly expensive since it's going in the basement and anything can happen down there - anything. Fortunately I found a rubber flooring site. These tiles were on sale and amazing! Not to mention the shipping costs were really low because rubber flooring is super lightweight. These were SO easy to install. All you need is a box-knife and a husband. BOOM.

Then we got to shop for the fun stuff. This was Jeff's job. He selected some fancy schmancy treadmill that shows where you're running while you watch on the TV. Which meant - yes - we had to buy a TV. Then we had to buy special brackets to hang the TV from the wall. Then we needed a DVD player for my workout videos (Yoga and that Jillian lady who is really the devil in spandex). Anyway, we're all set up now and completely broke so it worked out in the end.

Utilizing some tall space

Our bedroom was a little scarce with the tall walls and needed some love. So I took a bunch of frames and arranged them above the bed to create a focal point in the room. The photos can be swapped out and the frames can be repainted if I get bored. Chances are, that will be in the next few months! Now I need to find a paint color that works...

Another Show Coming Soon!

Admittedly, I've been pretty behind  the DIM (do it myself) design projects around the house. Most of this time has been spent locked up in my studio painting like mad with every spare second I can find. For the past 6 months, weeknights and every weekend, I have remained completely dedicated to painting and removed myself from my social life and regular activities. 

I usually take a painting hiatus every couple of years. These breaks have grown from weeks to sometimes months at a time. But every time I return to my studio after these breaks it's clear that my style and methods have changed significantly. After a lifetime of doing this I've come to realize this is my own method of taking time to collect new ideas and filing them in the back of my head until I'm ready to paint again.

This time I've returned with a style that I'm working hard to master and call my own. After 30 (something) years I think I've found the one! The work is unplanned and organic. If you know me personally, you'll know this is a complete departure from my actual life. I'm a bit of a planner. Maybe I wish my life could be more like this! Maybe it can be?

My newly designed website has some of my latest work posted. And I'm happy to announce that I plan to have another show so you can see it in person! No date just yet, but it's in the works right now.