I think I might as well face the facts: I don’t like chocolate biscotti. I always thought I just hadn’t yet found a good recipe, but a couple weeks ago I made what should be, and I think is, a fine chocolate biscotti and I just don’t care for it.

Which would make sense, I suppose, if I stopped to think about it for a minute. I’m not one for certain types of other chocolate baked goods such as chocolate graham crackers, cocoa puffs (can that even be counted as a “baked good”?), chocolate donuts (are they supposed to be so dry?), and chocolate cookies, so this failure of mine to adore chocolate biscotti does fit into the big picture.

I do like Oreos.

I was quite excited when I found this chocolate biscotti recipe in Cooking Light Magazine (November 2008). The recipe called for grinding up some bittersweet chocolate with sugar, adding some cocoa powder and some instant espresso granules, toasted hazelnuts (I used almonds), and dried sour cherries that first got a leisurely soaking in some warmed-up red wine. I also threw in some mini-chocolate chips.

The result was … dark. There really is no better word to describe them. Daaaark. Or maybe, “Dah-k, dah-lin’.” Actually, it’s more like a gravely growl: “Sexy and, grrrr, darrrk,” Then again, it could be a simple exclamation: DarK!

You would think they would be a dark chocolate lover’s dream come true, and I am a lover of dark chocolate, but they just didn’t cut it for me. And then it occurred to me: could it be that this was my problem? Maybe I wasn’t woman enough. Maybe I was an unsophisticated, bumpkinly, naive eater-of-chocolate. No! This couldn’t be so! My anxiety levels rose. Every time I glanced in their general direction, the darkly brooking, tall biscotti stared back at me as they postured cooly, lounging against the sides of their boxy glass jar. I ducked my head in shame and looked the other way towards lemon and pumpkin, less intimidating creatures.

Until yesterday. Yesterday I dished myself a scoop of leftover (stale) homemade vanilla ice cream and crumbled a piece of biscotti over top. I tasted, and—Oh my. Dark crunch met cool smooth and promptly became bosom buddies. I had seconds.

While I’m still a bit awkward in the presence of this biscotti, all is not lost. In other words, I won’t feed the sexy fellows to the chickens, but at the same time I don’t think I should be solely responsible for eating the remaining dozen or so pieces of biscotti, plus the vanilla ice cream that is required to wash them down. So if you would like some, I will give them to you.

And if you want the recipe I’ll give that to you, too. Or maybe you have a chocolate biscotti recipe that you think just might win me over? I’d be delighted to try it.

On Saturday I made Silverton’s recipe for sourdough donuts.

She describes them as “light” and “broichelike”, and while I don’t know much about broiche, I do know that these donuts were, by far, the lightest donuts I’ve ever sank (sunk? chomped?) my teeth into. They collapsed and melted away, almost as fast as cotton candy.

Not only were the donuts the airiest pastries ever, the recipe was like non-other. It called for ten tablespoons of butter, five teaspoons of cinnamon, two whole nutmegs, grated,

thirteen egg yolks,

as well as buttermilk, milk powder, starter, etc. (The recipe also called for dried sour cherries, but I opted not to use them.)

The dough was so moist it was more like a thick paste then a bread dough, and I ended up adding more flour then the recipe called for, but even so, the donuts fried super-fast—they were in and out of the oil in a blink of an eye.

We fried them up outside on the deck, kids crawling all over us, eating them up as fast as we could fry them. We hardly had any leftovers. (We did give a small bag of them to some friends, but most were eaten at the scene of the frying.)

Even thought these donuts were delectable, I still prefer my standard potato-dough donuts. Nonetheless! I would like to find an easy sourdough donut recipe, preferably one with a less-excessive ingredient list.

I guess that means more experimentation lies ahead of me. I’m not complaining.

Some people adorn their diningroom table with floral centerpieces.

We decorate with Naked Barbie.