Another new variation....

Because there are endless ways to make one of our favorite cookies, we rarely make the same biscotti twice. We've even made them colorful with jelly beans! This time we turned to the dark side for these cookies with today's recipe of Double Dark-Chocolate and Ginger Biscotti.

Dutch-process cocoa powder along with chunky pieces of dark chocolate are the two forms of chocolate here. Usually, but not always, some sort of nut is added to biscotti dough - I think hazelnuts would be a fantastic choice here, but we went a different route and chose a more rich walnut. To give the cookies a spicy edge, we added some finely chopped crystallized ginger with the nuts. We either make biscotti with softened butter (more tender) or using only eggs as the binder (more crunchy) - however, this time canola oil is used. The dough was about the same - maybe a little more sticky, but I thought the texture after baking was intriguing. It was a little more soft than using only eggs, yet more crumbly than when we use butter. Even though the texture in your mouth was more crumbly, we still got clean slices when we went to cut the baked biscotti loaves. Since the crystallized ginger has a sweetness to it, it pairs well with the chunky pieces of the slightly bitter dark chocolate - which surprisingly stay somewhat soft and a little gooey in spots.

Recipes
Double Dark-Chocolate and Ginger Biscotti