citrus coconut biscotti

For those wondering, my little catering do went extremely well a couple of weeks ago. Between my aunt and I, we filled up 6x 50ml containers full of food and we had a load of fun. We were cooking, baking, and packing to the last minute and when everything got picked up, both of us exclaimed 'That was a whole lot easier than I thought!' So if you have any catering you need assistance with, do leave me a message. My aunt and I (plus my mum) make a rather good team!

I've actually lost count as to how many things we ended up making. I started prepping things about 2 weeks before, I even took a day off work and on the day before, was still contentedly baking my life away. To be honest, I felt a bit lost when all the baking was done and all the food was collected; I ended up baking a tray of muffins afterwards just because I had the itch to keep baking.

Anyway, let me share with you the recipe for Citrus Coconut Biscotti. This was 1 of the 3 types of biscotti that I made. The great thing about biscotti is that it keeps well and you can start doing your baking in advance (immediately helpful when you have a lot of people to cater for and there's just one of you!)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line an oven tray. Whisk 220g caster sugar and 2 eggs in a bowl until combined. 

Stir in 200g sifted plain flour, 50g sifted self-raising flour, 80g dessicated coconut and 2 tsp finely grated lemon and orange rind.

Mix to combine.

Mould dough into 2x 30cm logs. Place logs on tray. Bake for 30 minutes and then cool on the tray for 10 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 150 degrees. Using a serrated knife, cut logs diagonally into 5mm slices.

Place slices in a single layer on lined oven trays. Bake biscotti for about 20 minutes until dry and crisp, turning halfway through baking.

Cool on wire racks.

Once cooled, store in an airtight container. Biscotti will keep for at least a month.

This batch of biscotti turned out a little browner than I would like but any earlier out of the oven, they wouldn't have cooked through. The recipe I've given above already has the oven time reduced by 10 minutes but see how you go. Best to stay by the oven and watch them whilst they bake. I was very much the eager beaver and stood by the oven for the whole time just to make sure that these weren't burnt to a crisp (trust me, it's happened before and I get into a rather foul mood if I have to bin the whole batch).

Anyway if I can share any advice re. catering, it's good to start early. Plan how you're going to use your kitchen in the lead up to the event. Baking these biscotti was a good call. It meant that I had a wider selection of goodies to offer on the day and well, you get to spread the cooking/baking out over a couple of weeks. Next post is another biscotti recipe; probably my favourite of the three that I made. Stay tuned!