Disasters In Baking: Almond and Chocolate Chunk Biscotti

Every once in a while I get complacent in my baking and decide to venture out into the unknown to tackle something unfamiliar.  It can't be that hard... right??

There are great benefits to brave the uncharted territories of the vast world of pastries: a great sense of pride and accomplishment.  But the downside.. is when it goes horribly awry.  It just plain stinks.

I attempted at 3 different recipes today that failed.. pretty miserably.  Did you catch that?  THREE.  

Oi.. the bruised ego.  Thankfully, I'm surrounded by encouraging friends who don't expose me for the fraud that I am, but who say, "It's ok!  It's not... that bad!"

The first attempt... an Almond and Chocolate Chunk Biscotti recipe in the book Ready for Dessert by David Lebovitz.

The recipe is simple enough.  Whip the eggs, vanilla, and sugar until it gets pale.  Add flour (I substituted half of the AP Flour for Whole Wheat Flour) and baking powder to the egg mixture and mix well by hand then add toasted almonds and chocolate last.  In the original recipe it calls for huge 1/2" pieces of chocolate.  I didn't have huge pieces of chocolate so I decided to use chocolate chips.  Lucky for me, in the side notes on variations it said I can substitute chips for the chunks.  So I did.  I divided the logs into two and baked it for about 20 minutes.

When I went to cut the logs to bake it a second time the logs of biscotti were bleeding chocolate out the yin yang.  It had so much chocolate in it, I couldn't see the whites of the cookie that's so clearly shown in the photo in the book. 

Maybe I'm missing something.  I just don't know what it is. 

The other two recipes... well, they require a bit more explanation and details of the recipe/execution gone wrong so I will elaborate in the next post.  Until then, dear friends, stare at the photos above in amazement, like I do, wondering... 

"What the hell is that?!"