"Sweet Treats"- Almond-Chocolate Chip Biscotti

My real introduction to 'international' cuisine,after coming to USA, happened not only due to 'Food Network' and 'eating out' for dinner,but because I started working at 'Cornell'. As in any University, we had so much diverse population in the department,that it was obvious for the cultures to be shared and intermingle. There were 'Coffee Breaks', 'Lunches at Haustorium' (Dining room of Plant Path Dept) and bringing in 'Left overs'...that exposed me to various cuisines and dishes. One of our older Custodians loved to bake.But her husband was diabetic and she did not want him to eat all that sugar..so she always brought those goodies to the Dept for 'homesick' students and us research assistants. It was amazing to see that smile on her face,when we complimented her about her baking!

I had my first 'Homemade' Biscotti in my lab at Cornell."Biscotti" is a type of Italian Cookie/Biscuit and it literally means 'twice baked' because of the way it is baked.

 One of my colleagues liked to bake and she would bring her baked goods to the lab the next day for everyone to munch.I was always fond of 'dunking' something in my tea or coffee and especially something this crunchy!So got the recipe from her to try out myself. I still have the hand written paper with the recipe she gave me. She had drawn illustrations of 'biscotti making' for me to follow. That was really nice of her! Till now, I always made Biscotti from that recipe...changing a little here and there....adding chocolate chips/cranberries/walnuts etc etc. Not that the Biscottis came out 'the best' or extraordinary but somehow I just stuck to that recipe. Today I thought of trying this new recipe from "GoodHouseKeeping".I used 'Almonds' instead of Walnuts as I did not have enough of those and reduced the amount of chocolate chips and almonds to 1/2 cup each.Other than that the recipe was pretty straight forward.

The recipe can be found here  on "GoodHouseKeeping"

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder/chocolate-chip-biscotti-739

Dunk the Biscottis in your favorite Tea/Coffee and enjoy the Sweet Crunch!