Sugar Glazed Almonds: Day 7 of 12 Days of Christmas Cookies

TWD: 15 Minute Magic - Chocolate Amaretti Torte

Holly of Phe/MOM/enon chose our TWD-recipe for today: the 15 Minute Magic - Chocolate Amaretti Torte. This torte was easy to assemble: it only took 15 minutes to make the torte and get it in the oven. I wanted to make half the recipe and thus create two four-inch tortes instead of one big torte. However I made one mistake: I forgot tho halve the recipe.... Hahahah! I found this out after I filled the two torte-pans and had some batter leftover. I filled a muffintin with this and ended up with 6 muffin-size tortes too!




The four-inch torte, pre-glazing

After topping the tortes, big and small, with the glazing and popping them into the fridge I started making the optional almond cream. I whisked the cream untill I had soft peaks and then proceeded to add the confectioners sugar and the almond essence to the cream. When I started to mix the almond essence with the cream, disaster struck: the cream curdled.... :(
So I served the torte with a crumbled amaretti on top.

The muffin-size torte

The torte tasted good, but to me it wasn't the best of Dorie's recipe.... The outside of the torte was dry (pre-glazing ofcourse), but the inside was still nice and moist.
In total I had 14 portions, which would be 5,5 WW Points per portion.

My giveaway is still open until the 16th of April!!

TWD: Lenox Almond Biscotti

For this tuesday Gretchen of Canela & Comini selected Lenox Almond Biscotti. The recipe can be found here.

Before this challenge I had had biscotti at several places and liked it somewhat, but I for some odd reason I wasn't really excited about making them. So I procrasinated untill it was Sunday late afternoon and started baking.

I added cinnamon to my dough, because I just love cinnamon!! I love it!! I love it so much that I usually double the amount of cinnamon that goes into my apple pies just to make it taste more like cinnamon. So for me it made sense to add a complete teaspoon of cinnamon.

Because I have such a tiny oven I had to bake one log at a time. Will my first log was in the oven I found out that I accidentally subbed the yellow cornmeal with bulgur.... No biggie, everybody makes mistakes, don't they? I mean, the packaging of the cornmeal and bulgur ar so much a like, right? Right? NO, THEY ARE NOT!! IDIOT!! Yes, the packaging is both coloured with red, bur you can still easily see the difference between the cornmeal on the left and the bulgur on the right!!

With no eggs left in the house I decided to take my chances and see what the biscotti would be like. The taste was actually OK, but the texture of the biscotti was way to grainy: the bulgur had remained as tiny little hard granules. I took them to work and all though they were nog to my liking, my coworkers actually liked them. Some even came back for another one!! But me being a perfectionist, I just knew I had to make this recipe again, with the cornmeal added this time!

Before putting the logs into the oven I sprinkled some sliced almonds on top of them. With this recipe the logs have to be baked twice: first for 15 minutes, then cool down, cut them and then bake for another 15 minutes. With mine I found that the logs spread out a lot: they doubled in with and needed almost 30 minutes for the first bake instead of the indicated 15. While the first log was in the oven I put the second one in the fridge, to prevent Senna (my cat) of nibbling on it.

A tip from Linda of Tender Crumb was to spray the log wet when cutting it into strips so it wouldn't crumble as much. This worked really well!!

Now, after the second bake of the second batch I can finally say it's all worth it: these biscotti taste great!! They will defenitely be made again!


ATTENTION: For those of you still wanting to join Tuesdays with Dorie, hurry up: the closing date is 31 October, after that date they will no longer accept new members.....

Now it's time to introduce my sweet pets to you all, here they are:

Senna, my 2-year old cat who loves to lay about, take everything in, sneak herself into the background of pictures, food and taking naps

Scott, my 6-year old Border Collie who loves to play, eat, sleep, play, eat and play!

Update: my coworkers preferred the non-bulgur biscotti over the bulgur biscotti, big surprise!! Hahaha!