Cantuccini Tuscan biscuits

Cantuccini are typical of Prato, in Tuscany, but they have become very popular in all Italian cuisine. Their real name actually leaves nothing to imagination: “Biscotti di Prato” Don’t be misled though: these biscuits are not for breakfast or for snacking, they are a proper dessert, best served with a very popular sweet wine called “Vin Santo” (Holy wine).

I cooked these biscuits a while ago, the picture kind of gives it away, as the light is not the one we have in December here in Dublin. Actually, it was taken in Italy in March.

The particular thing about these biscuits is that you will have to bake them for a while, take them out of the oven and slice them, and put them back to bake. In this sense they are the real “bis-cotti”, which means “twice baked.”

Here are the ingredients for, well, a few…

• 500g (about 1 lb)  plain flour
• 5oog of sugar
• 300g (10 oz) of unpeeled almond
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt

Preheat the oven at 180°C (356°F) and toast the almonds for 10 minutes, then chop them coarsely. Separate the egg whites and Whip them. Then beat the yolks with the sugar until they form a light and even cream. Put the two egg mixes together and mix them.

Sift the flour in a large bowl and add the baking powder and the salt and the exx mix, one tbsp at the time. When everything is well mixed, add the almonds.
Now you have to give the mix a semi-circular flat shape and lay it on a baking tray (cover it with parchment paper first) and bake them for 15 minutes.
Take them out of the oven and slice them. They should have the shape you see in the picture, about 1cm thick.
Lower the temperature to 150°C (300°F) and put them back in the oven for 25 minutes.
To give them the right texture, let them rest for 24 hours before serving.

More biscotti recipes

Polenta biscuits

This biscuit recipe is a special one. Polenta flour is nothing but cornmeal, cook it and you’ll have polenta, which is a classic peasant dish from Northern Italy (more of that in future posts).

I baked these polenta biscuits for my colleagues last week (it was my birthday), along with some classic chocolate chip cookies. An interesting social experiment about people and food came out. As I ran out of butter for the cookies, I had to halve the quantity. When I started to walk around the floor with a big container with many polenta biscuits and very few cookies, everybody went for the ones they were more familiar with, that is the cookies, even if they had to twist their fingers to pick them up without touching the others. As a result, cookies finished very soon, and this opened the road to the polenta biscuits. Needless to say they were very well received.

This is not a classic Italian recipe, in fact it’s taken from one of the first Jamie Oliver’s books, The Return of the Naked Chef, (click here for .co.uk)  but hey, polenta flour is like a flag, it makes something Italian. Needless to say, they’re perfect for breakfast, along with these other breakfast biscuits and cakes

• 170g (6 oz) butter
• 170g (6 oz) sugar
• 255g (9 oz) polenta flour
• 100g (3 ¾ oz) plain flour
• zest of 2-3 oranges, finely chopped
• 2 large eggs

Put the sugar and the sifted flours together, then rub in the butter. The method should be the same as for the shortcrust pastry in the fruit tart: use cold butter and make sure you rub it in the flour as quick as possible. But in this case you won’t have to roll the mixture out, so feel free to soften the butter in the microwave and stick the mixture in the fridge before baking it.

Once the butter is mixed, add the orange zest and the eggs. Put it in the fridge until it’s firm (from 30 minutes to one hour), then spoon small teaspoons of the mixture on the oven rack covered with parchment paper, and bake in the preheated oven at 190°C (375° F) for 5-7 minutes until the edges are brownish.

Let the biscuits  cool completely before serving.

More cakes, and  more Jamie Oliver’s recipes.

There you go Campagnole homemade biscuits: this is my contribution to the Eating your own words contest. From Andrea’s little bakery, with Claudia as art director, a long hello to Jennifer at Savor the Thyme and Tangled Noodle, with smarties and stars included.

This biscuits recipe is taken from Mulino Bianco’s breakfast biscuits called Campagnole (a very bad translation would be countryman biscuits). Mulino Bianco is the bakery brand of Barilla, more famous abroad for pasta. Probably there’s much more marketing than tradition behind this biscuits name, but they taste very good anyway and with this recipe you’ll have a supply of breakfast biscuits for one week. And when the supply is over, you can move to other breakfast biscuits and cakes.

This biscuits recipe was on the back of the packet.

• 120g (½ cup) margarine
• 30g (1 oz) butter
• 220g (1 ½ cups )sugar
• 160g ( 5 ½ fl oz )milk
• 1 egg
• 500g (4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 40g (1/3 cup ) rice flour
• a tablespoon of baking powder
• a pinch of salt

Put the butter and the margarine to soften in the microwave, then mix together with the sugar, the egg and the milk.

In a separate bowl, mix the flours, the salt and the baking powder, then add them to the liquid ingredients. Rub everything together and form a ball.

At this point the biscuits dough it’s probably too soft to be worked properly, so stick it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Take the dough out of the fridge and preheat the oven at 180° (350F). With a rolling pin make it about 7mm thick. Cut the dough into funny or regular biscuits shapes and bake it for 15-20 minutes or until the outside edges are lightly golden.

RANT STARTS: Mulino Bianco biscuits are very well known abroad (it’s a Barilla’s brand). Here in Dublin you can pay up to 4.50€ for a small packet of their chocolate biscuits, which are sold at 1.80€ in my hometown supermarket. Why? Why so overpriced? RANT ENDS (thanks for bearing with me).

Liked these homemade biscuits? Try more cakes