This is one of my holiday speciality, I usually bake them for Christmas and every once in a while for Easter. I stumbled upon the recipe in a Danish food and lifestyle magazine- Mad og bolig – some years ago, and I´ve been making them ever since. It´s like it usually is with biscotti, you either love them, or you can´t get what the fuss is about. My family and some of my Romanian friends find them hard to chew, luckily many other friends usually lick their fingers. 😉 My husband´s ex-boss used to like them so much she “ordered” them one December as nibbling snacks for the shop´s employees.

Recipe:

125 g almonds

2 eggs

225 g sugar

1/8 tea spoon fine salt

1 1/2 spoons coarsely ground coffee beans

1/4-1/2 dl strong espresso

5-6 cardamom seed capsules

350 fine flour

1/2 tea spoon baking powder

2 spoons cocoa powder

(100 g dark chocolate for coating)

Place  the almonds on a greaseproof paper and bake them in the oven for 7-8 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Whip eggs, sugar, salt, ground coffee beans and espresso together. Take the seeds out of the cardamom capsules and crush them. Sift flour and baking powder into the egg mass and mix everything into a soft dough. Knead almonds and cardamom into the dough and form two breads on the greaseproof paper. Sprinkle cocoa on the breads. Bake them at 180 degrees C for 17 minutes. Take them out and cut them diagonally into 1 1/2 cm sausages. Take them apart and bake them for 17 minutes more at 175 degrees C until they are crunchy and golden.

If you´d like to give them a chocolate coating, melt the chocolate in the microwave and give one of the ends a dip. Enjoy with coffee! Voilà!

xxx. Alina