Double Tries for Double-Baked Cookies

I've been itching to fill up my biscotti jar (yes, I have a jar just for biscotti in my home) all winter. In hindsight, biscotti were probably not the cookies to start with after open heart surgery. Something quick, and perhaps dropped by a spoon instead of hand shaped and sliced, would have been the better choice. But I just had to do it.

I have a great allergy-friendly biscotti recipe in my cookie cookbook that I use as my basis for a variety of flavors. I love this recipe, because it's the crunchy, old-school Italian cookie that really has to be dipped into espresso (or your drink of choice, depending on the time of day) to enjoy it. I just can't seem to leave well enough alone and just make recipes they way they are written anymore, though.

I stumbed across an old almond biscotti (not vegan) recipe adapted from an even older Bon Appetit version. The pictures were of those nice long, airy logs you find in cafes. I had to try making a safe version of those instead. I knew that the fat-to-sugar ratio was a bit different from my version, and I knew that I had to replace 3 whole eggs to make this one work. 

 When I adapt a recipe, I like to line up all of my potential recipes or sources in a side-by-side grid to compare the amounts of each type of ingredient. It's very soothing from an OCD point of view, and it can be insightful if you have to approach baking scientifically (so, pretty much if you have any type of special diet). What I found with this recipe versus my go-to crunchies was that the extra oil and sugar (and relatively small amount of extra flour) really caused these logs to spread out more. Which worried me...spread without eggs sometimes can turn into a crumbly mess. 

But! These biscotti actually sliced very well on the bias, and they stayed soft(ish) on the inside even after toasting. They looked like cafe cookies, and no one needed espresso to eat them for dessert. 

I'm sure to mess with these two recipes again instead of leaving them alone and enjoying them both. At the very least, I'll be changing up the flavors on this new version soon...because the biscotti jar is already empty again.

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Do you have a favorite vegan biscotti recipe? Have you tried either of the versions in this post? Let me know!