Chocolate Biscotti

These chocolate biscotti are easy to bake, and you can save time by using a boxed cake mix to provide most of the flour, sugar and cocoa. They are full of chopped almonds and covered with a white-chocolate icing, and they make a great food-based gift. While biscotti are traditionally so dry that you need to dunk them in something such as coffee or wine to soften them up enough to eat, these will be a little more tender in the center due to the cake mix. You can certainly have some coffee or tea ready (or even some milk) for dunking if you want a classic biscotti snack.

When they were introduced during the Roman Empire, biscotti were very plain. They were meant to be a travel food similar to ship’s biscuits or hard tack, and they weren’t treated as a dessert. Nowadays, however, biscotti come in flavors from savory to sweet, and they’re definitely meant to be enjoyed in a leisurely manner, while relaxing with something to drink.

Chocolate Biscotti Ingredients

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

• Chocolate cake mix: This is the base for your recipe, with flour, sugar and other dry ingredients already mixed together. Use one regular-sized package.
• All-purpose flour: Adding extra flour to the cake mix makes the dough denser and stiffer, which will help you form those logs of dough and make the baked biscotti harder. Otherwise, you’d have sticks of cake after baking.
• Melted butter: The butter in this recipe adds some fat and flavor.
• Large eggs: Eggs help bind everything together; use large eggs and not extra large.
• Chocolate syrup: Chocolate syrup helps increase the chocolate flavor.
• Vanilla extract: Vanilla adds a little more depth to the flavor of the biscotti.
• Almond extract: Almond extract complements the slivered almonds in the recipe.
• Slivered almonds: Almonds add crunch to these biscotti; slivered almonds work best here.
• Miniature semisweet chocolate chips: These chocolate chips are mixed into the dough for flavor.
• White baking chips: Melting these baking chips and mixing them with a fat source creates the icing.
• Shortening: Use shortening, not butter, for the icing to make the drizzle more stable. Learn more about when to use shortening or butter in baking.

Directions

Step 1: Mix the dough and shape the logs

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Beat together the cake mix, flour, butter, eggs, chocolate syrup, vanilla extract and almond extract in a large bowl. Make sure they’re well-blended. Add the almonds and chocolate chips, then divide the dough in half. Place each half of dough on an ungreased baking sheet and shape each into a log that’s about 12×2 inches.

Step 2: Bake the logs and let cool

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

Bake the logs for 30 to 35 minutes until they’re firm to the touch. Place the logs on wire racks (be careful!) and let them cool for about 20 minutes.

Step 3: Slice the logs and bake a second time

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

Place the logs on a cutting board and cut them into diagonal slices with a serrated knife. Each slice should be about 1/2-inch thick. Place the slices on ungreased baking sheets with the cut side down. Bake the slices for 10 to 15 more minutes, until they’re firm. Move the slices from the baking sheets to a wire rack, and let them cool completely.

Step 4: Make the white chocolate drizzle

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

Place the white baking chips and shortening in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave them until they’ve melted, and stir to combine them. Drizzle the melted icing over the biscotti, and let them sit until the icing is set. Store the biscotti between layers of wax paper in an airtight container.

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

Chocolate Biscotti Variations

• Use a milk chocolate or semisweet chocolate drizzle instead of white chocolate: You can easily replace the white baking chips with other baking chips if you want to change the flavor of the icing.
• Leave out or change the nuts: Almonds are a traditional addition to biscotti, but you can leave them out if you don’t like them, or you can use a different type of nut instead, such as chopped and toasted hazelnuts as in this hazelnut almond biscotti.

How to Store Chocolate Biscotti

Place a layer of wax paper in an airtight, food-safe metal tin. Alternate layers of the fully cooled biscotti and more wax paper. Eat the biscotti within a week.

Can you make chocolate biscotti ahead of time?

You can make these ahead of time, but storage time may limit just how far. If you want to make them weeks ahead, you won’t be able to store them at room temperature. You’ll have to freeze them, and you won’t want to freeze the icing, so be prepared to add the chocolate drizzle after thawing the biscotti.

Chocolate Biscotti Tips

Alejandro Monfort for Taste of Home

Can you add the chocolate drizzle and then freeze the biscotti?

If you plan to make these ahead of time and freeze them, add the chocolate drizzle when you’re about to eat the biscotti. Don’t try to freeze the iced biscotti.

How do you prevent humidity from affecting baking?

If your home is humid, you can try reducing the humidity with an air conditioner or a dehumidifier. If you don’t have those, or if the weather is too humid for them to have much effect, put the unbaked logs of dough in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes or so before baking them. Humidity can make the dough spread more, so cooling the logs makes them stiffer and more resistant to spreading.

Can you use melted chocolate instead of chocolate syrup?

Melted chocolate won’t have the same flavor as sweetened chocolate syrup, so it’s not the best substitute here. However, you can make your own using this homemade chocolate syrup recipe if you have baking cocoa on hand.

Do you need to dunk these biscotti?

The cake mix will make the centers of these biscotti a little more tender, just as cake-mix cookies are. (Try this chocolate cake cookies recipe for comparison.) Biting through these shouldn’t be as hard as it can be with traditional biscotti. However, you can dunk them if you want to or if you feel the final biscotti have baked up very hard.