Pina Colada Biscotti

My husband picked out this week’s recipe. We were looking for a recipe to make and I was kind of thinking of a decadent chocolate cookie, maybe something like a double or triple chocolate chip cookie. I had found a couple of possibilities but my husband came across this recipe for pina colada biscotti. I hadn’t made biscotti in a long time and the flavors of this one sounded really interesting. Plus I didn’t have to go to the store to buy any ingredients. Yay!

This is from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, which is a fantastic cookbook! I always forget how great the recipes are in there. This starts with a basic biscotti recipe, and then this is a variation where you add dried pineapple, coconut, and rum to the dough. I chose the American-style biscotti, since it is softer than the Italian-style biscotti. I don’t usually like the biscotti that are sold in stores, it’s just too dry. So I picked the recipe that would end up being softer.

I decided to double the recipe (I’ve just given the regular recipe here) since this recipe yields less than 20 biscotti. I had a little trouble getting all of the flour mixed in, so I had to do a little hand mixing at the end. It didn’t seem like there was enough rum in the dough, but I went with what it called for. My logs were bigger than the recipe specified, which has been the case every time I have ever made biscotti. Mine was about 4-5 inches wide and maybe thicker than it should have been. The recipe said about ¾ inch thick, and I thought it was about right but after the first 25 minutes of baking the dough still seemed really soft.

I didn’t spray the loaf with water before cutting, mainly because I didn’t have a spray bottle. These were fairly crumbly as I sliced them, almost alarmingly so, and I thought that maybe I would need to bake them longer, but it worked out. While they were crumbly on the top, you could press everything back into place and they looked fine. I baked them a little longer than 25 minutes the second time, since they still seemed too soft. An extra five minutes really helped.

I don’t think that these have that strong of pina colada flavor. You can taste the pineapple fairly well, but the coconut and rum flavors meld into the background. I think I would definitely like a stronger rum flavor. They do have a good crunch and they are really tasty. I think that adding coconut extract would be a good idea and maybe add rum extract to boost the rum flavor.

6 tablespoons butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon rum

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 cup finely diced dried pineapple

1 cup coconut

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a large cookie sheet with a silicone baking mat.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, salt, rum and baking powder. Mix until smooth and creamy. Beat in the eggs, the batter may look slightly curdled. Stir in the flour, dried pineapple, and coconut. The dough will be soft and sticky.

Transfer the dough to the prepared baking sheet and shape it into a log 14 inches long and about 3-4 inches wide. Bake for 25 minutes and then remove from the oven to cool for a short while (5-25 minutes). Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees. Before cutting the biscotti, lightly spray the loaf with room temperature water, this will soften the loaf for cutting.

Cut the loaf into ¾ inch slices, be sure to cut straight up and down and not at an angle or the slices won’t be uniform. Set the biscotti upright on the baking sheet and bake for an additional 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Recipe from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion