For a twist on cheese straws, try making savory cheese biscotti. These “cookies” are macho enough for Super Bowl parties but elegant enough for other occasions.

This recipe is adapted from Marcy Goldman, the creative cook behind Betterbaking.com. Usually, recipes fall under two camps: classical or fun. Reference books like The Cake Bible have trustworthy recipes, but after a while, I want something more than basic sponge cake. Then there’s the comfort-food recipes, like Paula Deen’s bacon-wrapped mac and cheese. But can you trust Paula Deen? She of the Velveeta chocolate fudge? Fortunately, you get great results with Marcy’s recipes, and there’s a twist to keep things interesting.

The secret to these biscotti is wine, which makes them taste even cheesier. I paired Gewürztraminer with Mimolette cheese (leftover from the CulinaryCorps potluck). Mimolette looks like cantaloupe, but the flavor is a cross between cheddar and parmesan. Because it’s firm, crunchy bits of cheese remain after baking.

After the first baking, these biscotti are as flavorful and tender as Red Lobster’s cheddar biscuits. I don’t know what the “unscotti” are like when they’re cool; I couldn’t wait that long. But my gut says that this recipe is a two-for-one. Bake once, and you have biscuits. Bake twice, and you have crunchy cheese sticks.

Savory Cheese Biscotti

Adapted from A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

Makes 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 dozen biscotti, depending on size

Any firm cheese and wine will work here: the original recipe calls for Parmesan and Chianti. To lighten things up, you can probably reduce the oil by half, since these biscotti are rich.

1/2 cup olive oil
3 large eggs
1 1/4 teaspoons salt, or to taste (depending on how salty your cheese is, you can reduce or increase the salt by 1/4 teaspoon)
1 tablespoon sugar
4 teaspoons cracked black pepper
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh rosemary, parsley, or chives
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup Gewürztraminer wine
2 cups freshly grated Mimolette cheese
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 to 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or greased foil.
2. In a mixer bowl, blend oil, eggs, salt, pepper, herbs, and garlic powder. Blend in wine, cheese, baking powder, baking soda, and flour to make a stiff dough.
3. Spread dough into a log about 10 inches long and 4 to 5 inches across and pat down to square off the dough neatly.
4. Bake until set, about 35 to 45 minutes. Cool slightly on baking sheet. Wrap and refrigerate log 1 hour (this step ensures that the biscotti don’t fall apart when you slice them). Using a long serrated knife, slice log into 1/4-inch-thick slices.
5. Preheat oven to 300F. Return biscotti to baking sheets and bake a second time to crisp, about 20 minutes, turning once at midway point to ensure even baking.
6. Taste one biscotto after it cools. If it is crisp, biscotti are done. Otherwise, bake a little longer, 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool completely on baking sheets.

After some teases here and there, here’s the new, improved recipe for homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread. Finally! While the original version was delicious, it tasted faintly chalky. The culprit was the powdered sugar, which has added cornstarch (to keep the sugar from caking). Unfortunately, raw cornstarch is as appetizing as raw flour.

I tried making my own powdered sugar by whizzing granulated sugar in a food processor, but it never came out fine enough. It was like crunching on sand. I even tried sweetening it with fruit paste, which split the mixture into a tough, chocolate blob and an oil slick. So that’s what happens when you mix oil and water…

It was time to go the route of the pros and make praliné (caramel powder). The combination of browned sugar, toasted nuts and cocoa powder put it worlds above Nutella. With this method, I didn’t have to add oil to make it a spreadable consistency. Not only was it healthier, but the flavors were more concentrated.

This caramel base is fool-proof. You don’t need a thermometer, and you don’t need to worry about stuff crystallizing. The finished product is so good that you’ll swear you jacked it from a French pastry chef.

For instructions, check the amended chocolate-hazelnut butter recipe.

Wow, this year’s Menu for Hope raffle raised $91,188 to feed schoolchildren in Lesotho, Africa! That’s 50% more than last year. Many thanks to the following:

• Chez Pim for conceiving and organizing this annual charity event
• Serious Eats for coordinating the East Coast prizes
• Prize donors for giving away thousands of dollars’ worth of goodies
• Bloggers for hosting the prizes
• YOU for donating!

Without any further ado, congratulations to Eric for winning the Wild Sweets Chocolate cookbook and Yunlin for snagging my homemade nut butters. For the full winners’ list, check Chez Pim’s site.

I won Charles’ Chocolates deluxe box assortment from Dessert First, Roni Sue chocolate buttercrunch and seasonal truffle subscription from Serious Eats, L.A. Burdick Chocolate Mice from Breadchick and Rancho Gordo beans to make it sort of healthy. Yowzers, that’s like a lifetime supply of chocolate.

Forgive me for being away so long. This blog has been broken, with viruses, post spam (yes, someone found a way to tack on info about male enhancement), and funny formatting. I restored my databases from backup and reinstalled Wordpress about five times. Hopefully, there will be no more fixes!

These fruits have waxy skins and stems that are too long for their own good. They look like the offspring of apples, guavas and pears. I would have ignored them at the market if it weren’t for my grandmother, a Chinese version of Martha Stewart. She makes her own chili paste and drinks goji berry-logan elixir every day. She introduced me to “hollow” greens (because the stems resemble straws), jujube dates and now, fragrant pears.

It sounds like a vague description, but that’s their proper name. Farmers have grown these pears in China’s Xinjiang region for 1,300 years, but they’ve only been in the U.S. for about a year. (I discovered these pears right when they came here, but by the time I wanted to write about them, they were out of season. Now I appear out of the loop.)

Other Asian pears are crunchy and light, but the flesh is gritty and not very sweet. The skin is also thick and bitter. Fragrant pears are even crispier, but they are also sweet. Despite the skin’s appearance, they’re also entirely edible (except for the seeds of course). They are so juicy that you need to slurp quickly after taking a bite.

They are in season now, so head over to your local Chinatown or fancy supermarket. They’re not for the eco-conscious (it takes lots of jet fuel and protective packaging to ship them here), but they are very special.

Chocolate bread is nature’s perfect food. Bread is basic nourishment for the body, while chocolate is nourishment for the soul. Think of pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) and chocolate toast, which prove that chocolate and dough just go together.

When I was a teenager, I saw Martha Stewart make chocolate bread from Balthazar Bakery. It was real artisan bread, not a muffin, with Valrhona cocoa powder and chocolate chunks. It sounded so naughty, yet so good.

When I moved to New York and finally tried that coveted bread, I was disappointed. While it was carefully crafted, the dough tasted bitter and wasn’t chocolaty enough for me. Fortunately, Au Bon Pain had crusty chocolate-cherry-walnut bread, and Fresh Direct distributed Ecce Panis’ bake-at-home chocolate rolls. When the rolls were fresh out of the oven, the chocolate oozed out of the feathery insides. (Note: Au Bon Pain no longer makes chocolate bread, and Fresh Direct only has chocolate bread pudding now. Boo!)

Since chocolate bread is going extinct, I compiled recipes from reputable sources, such as Balthazar, Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery, and the Institute of Culinary Education. I then made a lazy version by throwing cocoa and sugar into Sullivan Street Bakery’s famous no-knead bread recipe.

This is dessert for breakfast. I love toasting this bread, slathering on peanut butter and sprinkling bittersweet chocolate on top. The chocolate immediately melts into sweet lava. S’more sandwiches, filled with graham crackers and marshmallows, are especially good.

I realize that people are trying to eat healthily since it’s New Year’s, but this bread isn’t that bad for you. It’s low-fat, has a fair amount of fiber and has a little more sugar than commercial bread (and fortunately no high-fructose corn syrup).

For more no-knead bread, try my 100% whole wheat variation.

Chocolate No-Knead Bread

The sugar makes this bread chewy and moist, but it’s not too sweet for a good old peanut butter sandwich. If possible, use the metric measurements, as they’re more accurate.

Adapted from Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

2 1/3 cups (287 grams) all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup more for dusting
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (143 grams) whole wheat flour (recommended brand: King Arthur)
1/3 cup (31 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably natural process (not Dutch-processed)
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon (75 g) sugar
1/4 teaspoon (1 gram) instant yeast (or 1/4 plus 1/16 teaspoon active dry yeast*)
1 ¼ teaspoons (8 grams) salt
Scant 1 3/4 cups (387 grams) water
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed
1 tablespoon milk, for brushing
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

1. In a large bowl combine the flours, cocoa powder, sugar, instant yeast, and salt. Add the water and stir until blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Liberally flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Brush the top of the loaf with milk and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf.

Variation:

Double chocolate-cherry-walnut bread: After the first rise, pat the dough into a large rectangle on a well-floured surface. Sprinkle 1/3 cup each of good chocolate chunks; toasted, chopped walnuts; and dried cherries on top. From left to right, fold 1/3 of the dough over like a book. Fold over the other side of the dough and pat down into a tall rectangle. From top to bottom, fold 1/3 of the dough down. Fold the remaining bottom 1/3 to meet the top. Using your fingers or the heel of your hand, pinch the seams closed. Continue on with step 3 and let rise until double (it may take longer than the usual two hours, because of the weight of the mix-ins).

Notes:

• * If substituting active dry yeast, proof it in 1/4 cup of lukewarm water (reserved from the total water) for 10 minutes. Add the yeast with the rest of the water when mixing it in the dough.
• To make a sandwich loaf, turn out the dough on a floured board after the first rise. Gently pat the dough into a 5-by-9 inch rectangle and roll up the length of the dough. Pinch the seam closed with your fingertips or the heel of your hand. Rock the dough to even it out. Cover it with an inverted mixing bowl and let rise, seam side down, for about two hours. A half hour before baking, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F, with a standard 9-by-5-inch loaf pan inside. When ready to bake, brush the pan with oil and generously dust with corn meal or wheat bran. Drop the dough in the pan, seam side up (it’s okay if it looks messy). Shake the pan to even out the dough. Brush the top with milk and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Cover the loaf loosely with aluminum foil (leave room on top for the dough to rise) and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 15-30 minutes more.