Saffron biscotti (or why you should be VERY careful if you ever change a recipe)

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These saffron biscotti have been a Christmas favourite in my family for the last couple of years. Sweet saffron buns (also known as Lucia buns) are a traditional Christmas treat in Sweden and this is a modern spin off.

I decided to bring these to a Christmas party one of my friends hosted. Unfortunately I didn't have enough saffron at home so I decided to just make half a batch. I figured I would make a second half-batch and flavour them differently. Before starting I figured out the amounts I would need of everything and even wrote them down on a piece of paper so I wouldn't mess up. Well, somehow even with these precautions I managed to forget to half the butter. After adding all the dry ingredients I ended up with something like a very greasy batter, not the thick dough that it normally makes. That's when I realized I had used the full amount of butter!

What to do? Pour it out and start from the beginning? No, remember I didn't have any more saffron. Just add the full amount of all the ingredients? Well I thought about doing that but decided against it since that would drown the saffron flavour. I ended up with a compromise adding about half of 'the missing amount' of dry ingredients. It worked and they ended up OK. Not great but OK. Lesson learned - always make sure to use half of ALL the ingredients when halving a recipe.

Ingredients:
3½ oz. (100 g) butter
1 ½ tsp (1 g) saffron
2 2 eggs
1.5 ~½ cup (150 ml) sugar
5 ~2 cups (500 ml) all-purpose flour
1.5 1 ½ tsp baking powder
1.5 ½ cup (150 ml) almonds, with the skins removed
Raw sugar

Set the oven for 350F (175'C). Melt the butter together with the saffron, pour into a bowl and stir in the eggs. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients and the almonds. Carefully add the dry ingredients to the butter-egg mix. Shape the dough into 3 lengths and put them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle raw sugar over. Bake in the middle of the oven for approx. 25 minutes.

Remove the cookies from the oven and lower the temperature to 250F (125'C). Cut the lengths in ½ inch (1 cm) slices and put them back on the baking sheet, cut side down. Dry the cookies in the middle of the oven for approx. 10 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave the biscotti inside until the oven has cooled down (or over night).


I also made half a batch of gingerbread flavoured biscotti. This time I remembered to only use half the butter and ended up with the right type of dough. I used the same recipe as above, just omitted the saffron and added 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of ginger and ½ teaspoon cardamom. They were delicious (still not as good as the real saffron ones though)

Source: A Piece of Cake by Leila Lindholm