Almond Biscotti (Low Carb, Gluten Free)

I love almond biscotti. I learned to make it when I was young (like, middle school?) and somehow never got cut on gratter boxes. I also haven't had one in about 2 years, because traditionally they aren't very low carb.

But I have recently discovered the power of XANTHAN GUM. And yes it sounds like a space alien but it's 'all natural' and more importantly it acts like the protein/binder gluten, which DH can't have and isn't found naturally in any of my low carb flours, especially not my prefered one, almond flour.

The first step is to make almond paste that isn't full of sugar. Fortunately, if you have almond flour, egg whites, and your prefered granulated sweetener of choice (I like Splenda, because I don't have to convert the volume measurement, and erythritol makes my tongue break out, so goodbye Truvia) you can make almond paste! Just throw equal quantities of almond flour and sweetener into a food processor, pulse to combine, then add a couple of egg whites. Start with one and keep adding until it is roughly the consistency of play dough. Voila! Almond paste. If you want marzipan, add more sugar. A nice extra touch is to add about 1/2 tsp of almond extract per cup of almond flour.

After that, it follows standard biscotti procedure. How many it makes depends on how you cut them--if you like your biscotti thick there will be fewer. at about a 3/4 inch slice, I got about 18 large biscotti. They stay slightly moist on the inside. You could leave them in a warm oven, or slice them thinner

YUM

Recipe
 1 batch almond paste (1 cup almond flour, '1 cup' sugar sub, 2 egg whites, 1/2 tsp almond extract)
 4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

 1 3/4 cup almond flour + 1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
 1/2 cup sweetener (3 tbsp honey also works, but raises carb count)
 1/2 tsp baking powder
 heavy pinch salt (to taste)
 2 eggs
 1/2 tsp vanilla

Pulse almond paste and butter together in food processor (or stand mixer). Add almond flour, xanthan gum, sweetener, baking powder and salt. Pulse/mix until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla and pulse/mix until mixture is uniform. Form mixture into a large loaf measuring about 6 inches by 18 inches and 1 inch high for large biscotti,or two loaves about 4 inches by 12 inches by an inch for small biscotti, on a baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper. Bake at 350 F about 30 minutes. It should be lightly golden and springy to the touch. Gently transfer to a cutting board and let cool 5 minutes. Use large, sharp knife to cut into even slices, 1/2 inch to 1 inch thick. Lay them cut side down on the baking sheet, bake another 10 minutes. Flip slices gently, and bake another 10 minutes. Cool on tray, then store in a dry place. May soften over time; if that happens, place in a warm oven(even a toaster oven works!) for 10 minutes, and the crunch should be restored.

Homemade Mallowmars

Mallowmars, if you have never heard or tasted one, is a chocolate dipped, marshmallow-topped cookie that is about the size of a girl scout cookie, and can only be found in colder weather in many of the United States. Incidentally, there are a million variations on this cookie and no one knows who invented it.

Growing up in New Jersey, we couldn't always find them, so they were (and are) are a real treat. So when I wanted to make something nice for my mother, I thought I would make homemade mallowmars, because if I'm going to do something, I may as well do it in the most labor intensive way possible, yes? Or it's because it allows me to make cookies, candy and chocolate dip something all for one purpose.

Making these things is time consuming, but not 'difficult' in the way that making a baked alaska is difficult. It takes a lot of steps, but no one step is tricky.

Step 1: make the cookie base. I used a half batch of the "Joy of Cooking" sugar cookie dough, using an 1.5 inch cookie cutter, and it yielded a 100 bases.

You want to have extras, for testing at every step and to allow for failure (cookie cracks, flips over in the marshmallow stage, chocolate coating doesn't cover evenly). I had about a 10% loss  from start to finish, but your results may vary depending on the number of people who insist on taste testing and your ability to handle things with fingers covered in culinary superglue.

Step 2: Pipe on marshmallow. This requires some hand strength, or ingenuity. Preferably both. This is the biggest 'cookie down!' part, because if the cookie lands marshmallow side down, (as you can see happened to two in this picture) there's no hope for that one. I use Alton Brown's recipe, which has never failed me. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a recipe of his fail.

Step 3: After letting the marshmallow set for  4 hours, melt some chocolate. I like Ghiradelli 60% cacao chocolate chips, because they melt the best to give a not too thick, even coating and keep the temper the best. I melt them in a double boiler, because it yields the smoothest result.

Step 4: Dip the cookies in the chocolate, let sit overnight to set. Enjoy!

They may not be as pretty as the ones that come out of a box, but they taste a whole lot better. And totally worth the effort. 

Things look better in the morning.

I recently order a huge bag of really, really fine almond flour and about an equal amount of very fine oat flour. They greatly improved the texture of my Oatmeal Muffins to the point they were like normal wheat-based muffins and not cornmeal (they still don't rise very much, but who cares?). I've been wanting to experiment more with them, since I have so much and neither flour seems to hurt me. What I have learned so far is that experimenting with baking/pastry is a lot harder than experimenting with other types of cooking, and that unless you really mess up*, the results are still delicious.

This particular experiment was inspired by the fact that I have been missing Pop Tarts of late. Yes, those almost-entirely-fake, super sweet toaster pastries. They were a treat for really long car trips and going down the shore when I was a kid. So sue me, I'm nostalgic. But I thought that I could make a healthier approximation with homemade almond/oat pastry dough and some no-sugar-added fruit butters.

So last night I blindly plunged ahead. I probably should have looked up a recipe for pastry dough using almond flour. Or even one that was half oat, half almond like I wanted. I would have seen that almond flour crusts use a lot less fat to hold it together. When making a traditional pastry, I usually used a 1:2 butter to flour by volume (I do not fear fat). Almond flour only needs a 1:5 or less fat to flour ratio (I used a 1:4. I added half the butter I was going to and noticed it was already too 'wet'). Even if I had used the correct amount, it seems a lot of nut crusts have more in common with a crumb crust than the pastry crust I wanted and needed for this application. Even with an egg thrown into the mix, it was too wet and crumbly to be a good dough for pastry. It is, in its present state, very much like a butter cookie recipe. More experimentation is needed on this front.

However, I had made this dough, I was going to use it. After letting it chill for a couple of hours, I rolled out small ovals and put in about two teaspoons of fruit butter and folded it over or layered another piece of dough on top or made a really, really big jam thumbprint with half the dough. They baked up nicely, and looked really great.Until I tried to pick one up and it crumbled. I mean, just fell apart. I eventually enlisted a large spatula to get it onto a plate so I could at least see if it tasted good. It did, but wasn't exactly a pastry.

This morning  I sat down to write a post on "delicious failures". I wanted to take some pictures of the remaining 'pastries' and a picture of how it crumbled. Lo and behold, they didn't crumble when touched! I'm guessing the butter component set  over night so while the the 'pastries' are still delicate and melt/crumble in your mouth, you can actually pick one up. They would never survive a lunchbox, but at least they don't need a fork.

You can see where this one cracked when I tried to pick it up last night

This one has apple butter in the middle. More importantly, its holding together. 

I still want to do some more experimenting with this one before I post a recipe, but its a good lesson learned. Even if your baked goods look terrible straight out of the oven, they may be perfectly fine later.

~PhysicsGal

*Exhibit A: The great sugarless, honey-less spelt carrot cake. Exhibit B: The oatmeal coffee cake with more salt than sugar and not nearly enough milk. blech and crumbly to boot.

Nearly-No-Sugar Almond Cookies

Pretty much anyone who has meet me in real life knows that I love to cook, and in particular I love to bake. Growing up it was kind of the household hobby to make cookies or cakes or pies on the weekends or whenever we finished the previous one. Cookies in particular were a near constant. We never had soda (unless we were sick or it was a holiday), or chips or any of the various colorful kid junk food, but there was always homemade cookies. In college, cookies were a kind of stress release. Exams were always accompanied by at least two kinds of cookies, one of which had to have chocolate. When I need to give people a thank you gift, I give them cookies.

So it was rather a blow to my reality when I was told that for health reasons, I shouldn't eat cookies. Not in the generic "don't eat junk food sense" but that I needed to avoid refined flour and sugar or suffer serious consequences in short order. Being determined and prone to culinary experimentation anyway, I tried a whole bunch of disastrous healthy cookies. Note: do not ever try to make cookies with rye flour. No amount of flavoring will help.

Earlier this week however, I was struck with inspiration, and an overwhelming desire for a shortbread cookie. A bag of almond 'flour' was sitting in the back of my pantry. Shortbread cookies are significantly less cakey than other cookies, containing in their simplest incarnation flour, butter, sugar and salt. Surely I could approximate it with almond flour?

Low and behold, it worked. As I was cutting the butter into the almond flour in the food processor, it came to me that I might need a little more binding power. What better than an egg? Add a skimpy 2 tablespoons of honey to 2 cups of almond flour and a handful of slivered almonds, chill in the fridge to firm up, and dole out teaspoons of dough to bake at 375, I had 6 dozen bite sized almond cookies that were halfway between a macaroon and a shortbread cookie. Keeping the dough in ball form let it stay softer in the middle and more macaroon light, flattening the cookie let it be more shortbread like.  I calculated that each cookie has just under a half gram of sugar, which is perfect for my needs, and probably most low-carb people. That half gram is the only carb in the whole cookie. If you can tolerate a little bit more sugar, dipping half the cookie in melted chocolate just makes it better. [If you can't have any carbs  whatsoever, I suspect, though have not tested, adding another egg and using an artificial sweetner would work as well]

I left the flat ones in the oven a little too long, but they still taste good. Just, toasted

Recipe for Nearly-No-Sugar Almond Cookies

2 cups almond flour

1/4 cup butter

2 tbsp honey (the darker the better)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla 

Optional: 1/2 cup slivered almonds

In a food processor, combine 1 cup of the almond flour with the butter. Pulse until thoroughly combined. Add egg, honey and vanilla. Pulse until a wet dough forms. Add almond flour a 1/4 cup at a time until the dough is the consistency of  a chocolate chip cookie batter. Stir or gently pulse in the slivered almonds. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 30 minutes until dough has firmed up. Dish out 1 tsp  worth of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet (about the size of a grape). Leave in balls for a soft cookie, flatten for a crunchy cookie. Bake 20 minutes at 375 or until just beginning to brown around the edges. Let cool. 

Unlike grain based cookies which stale in a refrigerator from the crystallization of the starches, these cookies keep very well in a closed container in the chill chest. 

Enjoy!