My friend Jessica Patrick, who in addition to being sweet and kind is also an awesome running partner, gave me this recipe passed down in her Nona’s own handwriting. Jessica says she has childhood memories of her mother pulling out a huge yellow Tupperware bowl and then taking over the kitchen counters with cooling cookies.
The recipe passed along to me was humungous–enough for a gigantic Italian family. I cut it in half and after eating them for 2 days, Bid D finally made me give the rest away. We just kept eating them…literally you could eat them all day. Dipped in coffee. Mid morning tea. Little treat after lunch. Grab one on the way to pick up kids. Dipped in Vin Santo. Pre work out. Post work out. So you can see why we had to give them away.
Jessica says that her mother did not double bake the biscotti–they ate them soft. Jessica, however, double bakes and adds chocolate. I double baked for the crispiness, but I actually liked them better without chocolate, because the butter-walnut-anise combination is so delicious on its own. A little too delicious. Good thing Jessica will make me get up and run hill repeats. It was worth it, though!
Nona’s Walnut Anise Biscotti
Ingredients
- 2 sticks
butter, unsalted and softened - 6
eggs - 1 1/2 cups
sugar - 1 tsp
vanilla - 1 1/2 tsp
anise seed - 2 cups
walnuts, toasted and chopped - 4 cups
all purpose flour - 1 TBLS
baking powder - 1/2 tsp
salt
Cooking Directions
- Preheat oven to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
- Cream the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla.
- Crush the anise seeds in your hand. Add the anise.
- Add the walnuts, flour, powder and salt. Mix until just combined.
- The dough should be workable enough to form it into logs. If it is too wet, sprinkle in 1/4c more flour at a time.
- Form the dough into two rectangular logs. They should be as long as the baking sheet and somewhat rectangular.
- Bake at 350 for approx. 25 minutes, until they are light golden brown.
- Let the logs cool.
- Slice the logs across and lay the biscotti on the second baking sheet.
- Bake at 350 for approx. 10 minutes, until the biscotti are light golden brown.
Too many walnuts perhaps.
I love it Rebecca
You did an awesome job!!! You know, now that I think about why in the world the recipe was so big it was probably because there were 7 people in the house. My Nona, her husband, 4 kids, and my Nona’s mother. That’s a lot of biscotti eaters!!
This is a very special recipe to me and I feel very honored and thankful that I have such a great friend to re-create it. Makes me want to make some tomorrow!!
That’s interesting that you spell “Nona” with uno N. We have always spelled Nonna in our familia Italiana Nonna with due Ns.