You can’t go past a popular Italian recipe like Almond Biscotti. Complete with the classic crispy crunch, Cantucci is the perfect sweet treat.

Cantucci have such a long shelf life, so they’re great for baking a big batch to add to foodie gift hampers or take as travel snacks. They pair so well with coffee, people love any excuse to have these biscuits for breakfast in the morning!

Cantucci are perhaps the best known of Italian cookies. Simple to make, easily customizable with your favorite flavor combination, and perfect for holiday gifts and cookie trays! What Americans call biscotti in Italy are known as cantucci or cantuccini if they are small.

In Tuscany, cantucci are traditionally served at the end of a meal with a glass of vin santo for dipping, but you can also serve them for breakfast alongside your favorite hot beverage or as a snack.

Cantucci is a type of traditional Italian biscuit known as biscotti. It’s baked twice to give it an ultra dry and crunchy texture, and usually paired with a sweet dessert wine such as vin santo or in some areas muscat. Cantucci is from the northern Tuscany region in the town of Prato and is exclusively made with almonds. If it features fruit or other nuts, it’s just a regular biscotti (twice cooked biscuit) and not cantucci.

Across Italy, people take our cookies very seriously, whether krumiri in northern Piemonte or cuccidati in southern Sicilia. In central Toscana, we eat cantucci, the traditional crunchy almond cookies.

Oblong, dry, and nut-studded, cantucci are often called biscotti in the United States. While this isn’t incorrect, "biscotti" is the generic term for all "twice-cooked" cookies in Italian. Cantucci, on the other hand, specifically originated in Prato, a small city in Toscana. Like many Tuscan products, the delicious cookie evolved out of need: being twice-baked, it could be stored for longer periods of times.

While they’re baked twice and look quite fancy, they’re actually very simple to mix together and make, with only 10 minutes prep. After you taste the authentic Tuscan variety, try baking your own.

INGREDIENTS

Sugar 1 cup (180 g)

Eggs 1 - organic

Baker's ammonia 0.1 tsp (0.5 g)

Flour 00 2.3 cups (265 g)

Almonds 1 cup (110 g)

Marsala wine 1 ½ tbsp (10 g) - or other fortified wine

Orange peel 1

Fine salt 1 pinch

Butter 2 tbsp (30 g) - softened at room temperature.

1.Placing the sugar in a bowl, then add the egg with a pinch of salt.

2.Stir with a spatula there is no need to beat the mixture, just dissolve the sugar crystals well.

3.Separately, in another bowl, place the flour and the baker's ammonia

4.Mix and add the dry ingredients to the egg and sugar mixture

5.Mix and add the soft butter as well.

6.Knead with your hands and add the almonds and the grated rind of half an organic orange

7.Knead until all the ingredients are well blended, then form a small loaf and place it on the worktop.

8.Divide the loaf into two equal parts and cut a long and rather narrow roll from each

9. Place the rolls well spaced out on a drip pan covered with baking paper (there is no need to flatten them, it will happen naturally while baking).

10.Brush your rolls with beaten egg yolk (if the yolk is too thick, you can dilute it with a little water).

11.Cook the rolls in a static oven preheated to 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes, then, with a knife with a serrated knife, cut the rolls slightly diagonally, creating about 1/2-inch (1.2 cm) thick cantucci (almond cookies)

12. Place them back on the baking tray covered with baking paper and toast them in a static oven preheated to 320°F (160°C) for 18 minutes

13. Take out your cantucci and let them cool before tasting them