I have a family friend, Sandra (I've mentioned her before), who is Italian. She makes the best biscotti I've ever had and was kind enough to share her recipes with me (thanks, Sandra!). This particular biscotti is flavored with cocoa powder, milk chocolate chips, and amaretto, in addition to the classic toasted almonds.
Biscotti is not hard to make, in fact the dough is no harder than any other cookie dough. The trick is shaping them properly, not so thin at the ends that they get too crisp and not so thick in the middle that it doesn't get dried out enough. Interestingly it's not about size, you can make them mini, you can make them giant (though I'm not a fan of the overlarge ones like you find packaged at brand-name coffee shops), or you can make them in between (as I tend to do and did here.)
The other trick is, of course, baking them twice--"biscotti" means twice baked in Italian. You bake them once as logs, slice them while they are still tender, and bake them a second time to dry them out more. That ensures it will properly soak up your coffee or sweet dessert wine (I'd recommend coffee with these and sweet dessert wine with a more traditional, less chocolatey biscotti).
I've also made Sandra's traditional biscotti Toscani--which are delicious, albeit lacking in chocolate. I'll tell you about them soon!
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