Biscotti night, recipes #36 and #37

Last night my friends Kirstin and Stacy came over for a girls night. Kirstin is my personal trainer and has been helping me get in shape for the wedding. I thought it would be nice to "train" her on what I do well since she has been so gracious to train me these past months.

Admittedly, although I feel stronger, I don't know that I look any more in shape. I had hoped to lose a considerable amount of weight before our wedding, but the scale hasn't budged more than a couple of pounds. My existing clothes fit better but I haven't moved into a smaller size. On the one hand this is fine, because my dress fits perfectly and won't require alterations. On the other, wedding photographs last forever...

Yet, I have decided to view this, not as a failure to reach my weight loss goal but as a success in maintaining my weight during a stressful life event. This alone is amazing as I'm an emotional eater. Secondly, my arms are now stronger to hold my soon to be husband and my heart is healthier so that I may live a long life with him. For this I am truly grateful.

Kirstin wanted to learn how to make biscotti. I turned to my two favorite baking blogs for recipes. These women give great instruction and wonderful dialogue on their experience with the recipe. I highly suggest you read their blogs.


Recipe #36 for the year came from Shauna at Piece of Cake: Freshly Baked Stories, Recipes and Photos. We adapted the Triple Chocolate-Pecan Biscotti (which she adapted from The Craft of Baking) a wee bit as I only had a 1/4 of pecans but 3/4 cup of almonds, so we mixed them together. They were delicious and crunchy. Fantastic with my Sunday morning cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, yum!

Recipe #37 came from Brown Eyed Baker for Cranberry-White Chocolate Almond Biscotti which she adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. These are wonderful and perfect with a nice cup of Barry's Irish Tea. I used turbinado sugar to sprinkle on top as I prefer the texture and size of the granules. 

After the biscotti cooled I packaged them up in little treat bags. These would make great gifts with some gourmet coffee or fancy teas. I won't be giving mine away as T and I have already eaten half of them! No wonder my weight hasn't budged!

Just three weeks until we head to Maine for our wedding (four weeks! eeeee!). We're so excited!

Just 15 recipes to go to reach my goal of 52 new recipes this year!