Biscotti Mostaccioli

This semester in college I took Italian 101. For the last day of class our teacher (who is from Italy) made lasagna and we had a little party. We were all given the option to bring something or not; naturally, I wanted to try my hand at a traditional Italian recipe so I volunteered to bring something. My teacher suggested some sort of cake or cookie or desert, since those were easiest and she was already going to bring some lasagna. Being as it was close to Christmas and we had just learned about Natale, I decided to look up Italian Christmas cookies. (Which, by the way, in Italian "biscotti" means cookies, not just the bread-like-ish things we think of.) One of the first recipes that show up was for a biscotti (cookie) called "mostaccioli."  The best way I can explain how to pronounce this is think "mustache." It sounds like kind of like "moss-sta-chi-OH-lee" but fast and the emphasis of the "oh" (hence the capitalization.)  Anywho! It sounded good and easy to make, so I looked around at a few different recipes and gave it a try! To me, they taste like chocolate gingerbread cake-like cookies. Warning, the original recipe said this would make 5 dozen cookies, so be prepared to have many!

Ecco la ricetta!

Ingredients for the Cookies:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg*
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup whole milk

*=indicates an optional ingredient

Instructions for the Cookies:

1. Heat! Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. In medium bowl combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt. I used a sifter to make sure everything was incorporated and smooth, but dumping would probably work too.
3. In a separate large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat granulated sugar with softened butter until blended, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Once they have mostly combined increase speed to high; beat until light and creamy.
4. Turn the mixer back down to low and add in the egg. Beat until combined.
5. If you don't have an apron on yet, now would be the time to get one! Alternately beat in the cocoa-flour-spice mixture and then milk a little at a time, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat just until the ingredients combine. Occasionally scrape the bowl to make sure no flour escapes the combining.
6. Time to dish it out! I used a baking sheet with a layer of parchment paper for my cooking device. There are two ways to dish these out this:       (1) Dust your hands with cocoa and roll an even tablespoon of the dough into a ball then place on the baking sheet, spacing the dough about 2 inches apart. OR (2) Dust the parchment paper with cocoa and spoon out a tablespoon of the dough onto the baking sheet (I used an ice cream scoop) then dust the tops with more cocoa.       I used way number two [actually I accidentally doubled the recipe (like, 4 cups of flour and so on) and scooped my dough with a 1 1/2 tablespoon scoop and ended up with less cookies than the original recipe said I would. Magic? I think so] and it worked for me just fine.
7. Bake at 400 degrees for 7 to 9 minutes, until the cookies puff up in the middle and start to crack. 7 minutes usually worked for me, but I have an awesome oven. You will have to repeat this step many times to use all of the dough.
8. Remove from the oven and the sheet and let cool on a cooling rack.

But wait, there's more!!

Ingredients for Glaze:

• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup boiling (or really really hot!) water

Instructions for Glaze:

1. Bake and cool the cookies.
2. In a medium bowl, using a wire whisk, gradually mix the cocoa and boiling water until it becomes smooth.
3. Gradually add the confectioners' sugar and whisk well.
4. Before the glaze cools, dip the top of each cookie in the glaze then place it back on the cooling rack to allow the glaze to set. I would highly advise putting down wax or parchment paper on the area you will be working and the cookies will be cooling because glaze likes to drip and get everywhere.
5. Let the glaze set for about 20 minutes and you're done!

Now a word of warning, I did not have enough glaze for all of my cookies, so you may have to make more. These cookies were a hit with everyone who tried them, including myself, so I wouldn't worry about trying to get rid of them!