MOTHER'S DAY BISCOTTI

Two weeks ago, my folks returned from Italy bearing culinary gifts. One of them, as previously noted, was Deos Marcato's " Macchina Per Biscotti." For Mother's day, I made different flavored cookies, testing several of the 20 aluminum discs which accompanied the macchina. The macchina is accompanied by a pamphlet which includes directions and a recipe.

BISCOTTI RECIPE
500g flour
250g sugar
250g butter
pinch of salt
3 egg yolks
2-3 oz. milk
2 teaspoons cocoa (optional)

While melting the 250g of butter, I sieved 500g flour, 250g sugar and salt in a bowl. In went egg yolks, milk and butter and then the dough was mixed with a spatula. When finished, I made the recipe again so as to have enough dough for different flavored cookies. For a quarter of the total dough, I added the optional cocoa (though I used the full 2 teaspoons for a reduced amount of dough). The flavors were:

- Plain with Turbinado Sugar sprinkled on top
- Starbucks Coffee Liqueur (above, right, glass bowl)
- Starbucks Mocha
- Mocha w/Frangelico Liqueur (above, right, metal bowl)
- Xiame Mexican Vanilla w/Red Finnish Licorice
- Mexican Vanilla w/ Black Australian Liquorice
- Lemon w/Maraschino Cherry (zest from five small lemons)

I used 7 aluminum disc settings to make different shapes for each flavored cookie. It was hard to get the cookies to drop out of the macchina. The pamphlet advises, "the raised part of the die-plate must be facing downwards," which I took to mean the raised sides of the discs should face the tray. Next time I'll reverse the discs but I may try cooling the dough in the fridge. It might make it easier to separate the dough from the machine. The shapes were often surrounded by a circle of cookie dough.

The first batch of cookies went in the preheated 350 oven for 20 minutes as the pamphlet dictated. I found that the cookies browned a bit too much on the bottom and on the sides and only cooked them for 15 minutes on subsequent batches. While I love shortbread cookies, for the most part I like cookies to have a little give and not to fall into a dry, crumbly mess.

In the end, I don't think there was enough Frangelico or Coffee liqueur in the cookies to give them distinctive enough flavors. There was a vague, "essence of..." flavor for the cocoa, frangelico and coffee. I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of frangelico and coffee and would reduce the amount of milk next time and increase the liqueurs. I would do the same for the cocoa. I compensated for this with the lemon and the vanilla cookies using about 3 tablespoons vanilla and the zest of five small lemons for the lemon/maraschino cookies. I'd also sprinkle the Turbinado sugar on after cooking so the sugar stays visible. The results were all still tasty, but in the end, the lemon cookies were my favorites. We'll see what Mom thinks! Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

5/14 UPDATE