"Sometimes life gives you a second chance, or even two!
Not always, but sometimes.
It's what you do with those second chances that counts."
-- Dave Wilson, Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings
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| Chocolate biscotti 1-11-14 |
"Although no one can go back and make a brand new start,
anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."
-- Carl Bard
Lemons into lemonade.
Caterpillars into butterflies.
Ugly ducklings into swans.
Brownies into biscotti.
I tried a recipe for gluten free brownies that the author promised would "melt-in-your-mouth" and be "swoon inducing."
I admit, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. Maybe I substituted a couple of ingredients because of what I had on hand. And maybe my batter was gloppy and thick, not "thin like cake batter" as the recipe said it would be. I just added another egg white and an extra big splash of 12-year-old Dewar's (the recipe called for bourbon vanilla, so this was one of my substitutions) until they were finally "smooth and glossy."
I baked them on the short end of the recommended time and they smelled delicious. But when we cut into them after supper, these brownies did not, in fact, melt in our mouths. The flavor was okay, but they were dense and chewy (not in a good dense chewy brownie kind of way), and they were pretty dry, which is never a good thing in a brownie.
We had to dunk them to choke them down.
And no one swooned.
Life is too short to eat dry brownies, so I put my thinking toque on, and decided to slice the brownies into strips, bake them again to really dry them out, and turn them into biscotti, which are supposed to be dry, and supposed to be dunked.
It worked.
They smelled even better during the second baking, and dunked in a hot mug of coffee (spiked with some more of that Dewar's) they actually did sort of melt in the mouth. Nobody swooned, but Sam ate two and said "these are really good." He doesn't typically heap on the praise, so the unexpected compliment did make me a little dizzy.
Eating gluten free makes it almost impossible to enjoy certain foods, especially baked goods that taste as good as the real thing. But these biscotti weren't just a good substitute. They were every bit as delicious and crunchy and chocolaty as the real deal. So good, in fact, that I plan to bake more of the "mistake" brownies (with walnuts, this time) just so I can turn them into biscotti, on purpose.
Biscotti means "twice baked." It makes me wonder if the Italian baker who first made them was just redeeming a mistake, like me, or maybe finding a frugal way to re-purpose a day-old something or other that had gone a little dry.
I may never know.
What I do know, however, is that a do-over is always a good thing.
And my signature Dark Chocolate Scotch Biscotti are even better.
