Not Awful, but Not Great Either: The Return of the Problematic Biscuit Recipe
Welcome to the seventh instalment of my series where I test out recipes from an obscure 1990s Italian cookbook. This time, I tested another recipe from the ‘Cakes, Biscuits, & Breads’ section: Anise Biscuits (Biscotti all’ Anice):
Perhaps my spirits had been lifted too highly by the success of the coconut biscuits I made last week, as I was left rather deflated by this attempt.
This recipe, yet again, had very unclear oven temperature directions, calling for a ‘moderate oven’ where I had to figure out the specifics for myself. I will note, however, that these biscuits weren’t quite as disastrous as the almond biscuits, but neither were they worth making again in a hurry.
Like cantuccini biscuits, the dough is to be shaped into logs before baking, but the final result really paled in comparison.
The baked logs were very crumbly, even after allowing them to cool. Having baked more batches of cantuccini biscuits than I can count, I thought I was quite adept at slicing fragile biscuit logs without them falling apart…
…these biscuits, however, were so impossible to cut that I had to return them to the oven for a further 20 minutes, which, to my disappointment, didn’t really make the process any easier.
If I can take anything away from this recipe, it’s the idea to add anise to my next cantuccini batch, as I do love the idea of it combined with almond, brandy, and lemon.
FINAL RECIPE RATING: 3/10
So, this was another recipe which wasn’t really worth the end result and I was left with a large batch of dry and rather bland biscuits. At least, however, they weren’t completely inedible, like the almond biscuits.
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