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Almond Biscotti

If you haven't ever baked biscotti before I urge you to give it a try and then come back here and tell me it wasn't just about the easiest thing you have ever made.

Which makes me ponder….why the heck is it SO expensive? It's not made up of pricy ingredients. It's not complicated or overly time consuming. So what gives, biscotti manufacturers?

I came up with the recipe the way I often do. I google the heck out of it and then come up with my own version. I'm a pretty intuitive cook. I can tell by looking at a recipe how it will turn out and what I would do differently.

This is my version of Almond Biscotti. The end result is a light, crisp cookie that will not break your teeth and holds up well to dipping into your beverage of choice.

Almond Biscotti

1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar + 1 Tbsp.
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped almonds
Milk (to brush over the top)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees farenheit.

Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs slowly and mix well. Add the extracts.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in separate bowl (tip: use a whisk to combine).

Add flour mixture slowly to the butter/sugar mixture until combined. The dough will be sticky. Add the chopped almonds.

Using a spatula, spread the dough onto a baking pan that has been lined with either a Sil-Pat or a piece of greased foil. You can either make two narrower rectangles or one wider one. Once you have the general shape, wet your hands and smooth down the dough.

Brush with milk and sprinkle the reserved tablespoon of sugar over the top.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and slide the Sil-Pat or foil, with the biscotti on it, onto a cooling rack. Turn the oven down to 300 degrees farenheit.

Cut biscotti into 1/2" wide strips and return, cut side down, to the baking pan (no Sil-Pat or foil needed at this stage). Bake for 10 minutes then flip over and bake for another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool on the cookie sheet. Enjoy!

Monday’s Musings

Friday’s Favorites

Flickr Favorites

Nice Etsy shop with vintage style cabochons, beads and trims: Snapcrafty
Free, antique clip art on Flickr
I love love love stationary supplies. I especially love fountain pens. Japanese pens at that!
I've been talking about taking a photography class for years now - this class offered by Susannah Conway might be just thing to get me started.
New to me blog. Scroll down and look at her bird gift tags. Aren't those gorgeous? A Creative Mint

Have a Happy Friday Everyone!

More Mendo

We are going on a house tour of Mendocino.

I am certainly not an expert on Mendocino history but what I gleaned from various travel guides and websites is that it was settled by disillusioned gold seekers who decided to make their fortunes by selling lumber. In order to transport the lumber it became a shipping port and much of the architecture is owed to homesick sea captains' families building in the New England style they were accustomed to.

Okay – that isn't even the cliff notes version of the cliff notes version of Mendocino history but you get the gist.

There are a lot of pretty houses in the area.

And lots of lovely white picket fences.

I really just wanted to pick up a house and take it home as a souvenier. Mendocino has the reputation of being one of the most beautiful coastal towns. Works for me.

After our leisurely breakfast on Saturday morning we drove into Fort Bragg to hit up glass beach (I'll have to do another post on that – it was just amazing) and do a little window shopping.

Look! I found my people:

Fort Bragg was okay. We had fun poking in the shops but honestly - it seemed to be either touristy souveniers or Carharts at the local hardware shop. We did pick up some baked goods at lovely bakery and toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo (not).

After Fort Bragg we drove into Mendocino (where the house pictures above were taken) and lunched at a local hot spot, Mendo Cafe.

Across from the Cafe there was an interesting building with a statue on top that I snapped a few pictures of.

I'm not sure what the statue depicts. It would look rather solomn if it weren't for all the birds perched on their heads. Nothing ruins a dignified moment more than a bird roosting on your head.

I'm going to jump ahead a bit. After lunch and picture taking we headed back to Glendeven Inn where we had our wine and earthquake. Then we headed back into town for dinner at the Mendocino Hotel (old school Mendo).

On Sunday we reluctantly said goodbye to our room at the Inn and headed down the coast to Point Arena to see the lighthouse.

Now I expected we would just walk up to the top of the lighthouse and have a quick look around and then hop back in our car and be done. But it was way more interesting than that.

I truly expected us to be the only ones there but actually there were a number of other people visiting the lighthouse and it was staffed with several docents that gave us a tour of the lighthouse and talked about its history.

It was built in 1870 and the government hired and housed four civilian families to "keep" the lighthouse. In 1906 when the big San Francisco earthquake hit it was damaged and had to be torn down (except for the spiral staircase which is still original) and rebuilt.

We climbed up to the top of lighthouse and saw the view from up there. Here is looking down onto the original fog horn signal room (okay not the official name for the building but that is what it was used for). Now it is the museum. That odd, pointy shaped grey thing to the left of the building (inside the fence) is a whale skull.

It was kind of dizzifying to look down from up there.

Even more so looking in this direction:

The California coastline really is gorgeous, isn't it? Very austere and rugged.

If you ever have the opportunity to visit a light house do so. It really was fascinating. Point Arena is run by a non-profit group and they are very knowledgable about the history of this particular light house and about light houses in general. Did you know every single light house in the United States has a unique signal – both for its light signal and its foghorn? That is so any sea captain sailing past can tell exactly where they are by the light or by the foghorn.

After the light house tour we just headed on down Highway 1, making our way back home again. I used this shot on my Monday's post but it deserves another posting:

Really magical – the entire weekend.

Glendeven Inn, Mendocino

For about 25 years now Rick and I have been saying "we really should go to Mendocino for the weekend…" and finally, in honor of a milestone birthday (his), we did.

And we did it spectacularly.

After hours of on-line searching, weighing the various merits of various inns, I decided on the Glendeven Inn in Little River, CA (about 2 miles south of Mendocino). I am a sucker for reviews and there was no shortage of great ones for this particular B&B.

I'm not sure if it was the view or the llamas that pushed me over the edge. Maybe both.

This was the view from our bedroom. The Inn is situated on eight acres of gardens and farmland. There are six llamas that live on the property along with 40 or so chickens. The Inn consists of a main farmhouse (where we stayed) and several other building including a Wine Bar(n) that serves appetizers and wine every evening.

We stayed in the Bay View room which has a certain notoriety because Bill & Hillary stayed there in 1985. Yes, that Bill & Hillary. The owner, John, even showed us the entry they left in the room's guest book. When I booked the room I figured if it was good enough for an ex-president and a senator then it was probably good enough for us.

Oh yes. I think that view will do.

From where we live, just east of Sacramento, the drive to Mendocino is fabulous. After a brief trip down 80 we hit highway 12 through Napa Valley, a short hop on 101 then meander through the Anderson Valley on highway 128. It ends at highway 1, just a few miles south of the Inn.

We arrived around 4:00 in the afternoon on Friday and after checking in we tossed our bags into our room (after admiring the bottle of champagne they left for us in honor of Rick's birthday) we quickly strolled the grounds before it got too dark.

There's the Wine Bar(n) above. They rent out the two upper floors as a vacation rental for bigger parties (sleeps six or so, I think).

The whole place was just gorgeous and just the type of dream home and garden both Rick and I would love to have. We briefly considered just not leaving on Sunday. Just refuse to check out. What could they do?

We've never stayed at a Bed & Breakfast before. I really didn't have any preconceived notions except maybe some awkward conversations down in the drawing room with complete strangers. That didn't happen. The staff was very unobtrusive. We ran into one of the owners when we were prowling the grounds and he was very gracious and welcoming. He told us a little bit about the llamas and invited us to come out later in the evening at feeding time so we could get to know them a little bit better.

My next house is going to have a bank of windows, overlooking the garden, just like that.

On Saturday afternoon, after a day of sightseeing, Rick and I sat in the downstairs sitting room with our wine and beer and played a game of scrabble. We sat at that round table in the window. While we were sitting there I told Rick to quit jiggling the table. He said he wasn't touching it. Then we noticed the hanging plants in the room swaying back and forth. A little earthquake to enliven our peaceful afternoon (Note: A 6.5 earthquake hit the Eureka, CA area at 4:26pm 1/09/10 – about 125 miles north of us).

Each morning, at 9:00am, we were greeted with a knock on our door and a laden breakfast tray. Eggs courtesy of the Inn's chickens and a print-out of what the Mendocino area had to offer that day.

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of the sightseeing we did in Fort Bragg and Mendocino. Poor Rick probably felt like he was driving Miss Daisy. I kept ordering him to pull over so I could take pictures.

It was a perfect weekend. I'm only sorry it took us 25 years to get around to it.

(Our room was on the right, on the second story. The three windows were all part of our bedroom. I'm not kidding – the view was amazing.)

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