Holiday Cranberry + Pistachio Biscotti

The deadline to mail out cookies for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap is TODAY! I made a batch and a half of biscottis last night but they were nowhere near the 3 dozen I need to mail out today. So I got busy this morning, with Florence + The Machines filling up the kitchen, and busted out the rest of the biscottis. They are in their last stage of baking and should be done in about 5 more minutes!

I haven’t had a biscotti in a SUPER long time so I was excited to see that none of the matches on my cookie swap list had a biscotti recipe on their site. The dough is pretty simple to put together but you do have to take into account the baking time since you have to bake it twice and let cool in between (for a total of about 90 minutes) but it still doesn’t take that long and the results are definitely worth it!

This recipe is adapted from Giada De Laurentis‘ recipe from FoodNetwork.com. I just substituted out ingredients to make these cookies vegan friendly– they are perfect with tea or coffee!

Holiday Cranberry + Pistachio Biscotti

Makes about 1 dozen

You will need an electric hand mixer for this recipe.

- 2 cups AP flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) vegan butter, such as Earth Balance
- 1 tsp grated lemon zest
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 egg replacers, I have started to use Orgran brand (Orgran, not organ as I keep thinking it is) which is gluten-free and has worked very well for me when I am baking
- 3/4 cup pistachios, roughly chopped
- 2/3 cup dried cranberries, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a heavy baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl place the sugar, butter, lemon zest, and salt. Using an electric mixer beat until creamy and fluffy. Beat in the egg replacers. Add the flour and bkaing powder and beat until just blended. The mixture will be very crumbly. Stir in the pistachios and cranberries.

This part is a little harder but you need to form the crumbly dough into a log about 13″ long and 3″ wide. What I did was take handfuls of dough and formed a 3″ wide piece of the log, placed it on the baking sheet, then made another one and connected them since I was not able to make one large log at one time…maybe it’s because my hands are small so I had a difficult time handling. If you can make one large log that would be faster and easier. If not, you can do the make a log piece-by-piece method I went with.

Bake until light golden, about 30 minutes. Cool for about 30 minutes. The cookie should still be warm but not hot to the touch.

Carefully transfer log onto a cutting board. Again, if you are having a hard time, you can cut the log in half (very delicately as to not scratch your cookie sheet) first then transfer to cutting board.

Using a long sharp knife, cut the log diagonally into 1/2 to 3/4″ thick slices. Arrange the biscotti cut side down back on the baking sheet. Bake for another 20 minutes, until they are pale golden. Transfer the biscotti to a rack and cool completely.

If you want to dress these guys up, you can heat up some dark chocolate and dunk half the biscotti into it or drizzle on top and sprinkle with sparkling sanding sugar.

The good thing about these cookies is that they can be made ahead of time and stored in an airtight container for up to 4 days or wrap them in foil and freeze in a sealed plastic bag for up to 3 weeks. These cookies are also very good for mailing, another plus since I am going to go to the store to get some containers now

Here they are in snowmen glad bags, cushioned with green tissue paper, placed in tupperware containers. I included a card and pin so the recipients would know where these came from.

{My cards didn’t come out right at the margins I will have to trim them. On another note, if you’d like your own 1″ buttons for your blog or business, check out The Button Chick!}