Italian | Z's Cup of Tea

I’m grasping for words here how to begin this post and how to describe this cake. I could just leave you with the recipe. I saw this cake on Sassy Radish and knew I wanted to make it. And, after roughly a couple of weeks, make it I did. It seems that olive oil cakes are making quite the buzz in the food world and I started to get interested in making one after seeing a recipe for one from the new cookbook Good to the Grain. (I’m still waiting to borrow a copy from the library.)

The cake is fairly uncomplicated, although I did change a few things – first and foremost making it gluten-free, and tweaking some of the ingredients because I did not have them on hand. More fairly, I hadn’t paid full attention to the ingredients list and found out, as I was following the recipe instructions, I was out of orange juice and didn’t have a lemon to zest! Perhaps ironically, there was orange juice last night but it was drunk by my little brother and, at that time, I wasn’t thinking of this cake so I didn’t think to save some.

before going in the oven out of the oven

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The idea for using a loaf pan came to me after making a loaf of nut butter bread, which didn’t rise much and the slices were the same width and length of biscotti. When the sliced biscotti are taken out of the oven, they may be soft but as they cool they will harden.

Ingredients

1 cup almond flour
1/2 cup walnut flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 cup currants
1 egg
1/2 cup honey
8 tbsp. coconut oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon extract (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 325ºF and line a 9 1/2-inch x 5 1/2-inch loaf pan with parchment paper. In a bowl, incorporate the nut flours, baking soda, cinnamon, and currants.
In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, honey, coconut oil, and extracts until creamy and fully blended. Stir in the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until all the flour mixture has been used. The batter will be somewhat similar to dough and it will be very stiff and sticky.
Spoon all the dough into the loaf pan, making sure to spread evenly to ensure even baking. Bake 35 minutes. Despite the baking soda used, the biscotti will not rise much.
Remove biscotti from the oven and cool for about 5 minutes or so. Reduce oven temperature to 275ºF. After it’s cooled enough, remove from the pan and slice crosswise. Lay the slices, cut side up, on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 20 minutes. Remove biscotti from oven and cool. As it cools, it will become firmer and develop a pleasant crunch. Dunk the biscotti in tea or eat as is. Store in an airtight container. Enjoy!