Homemade Biscotti

I have been in the mood to do a little baking lately and I finally got my chance!  For the first time I made homemade biscotti!

Last Wednesday, was the girls last night for Pioneer Girls (kinda like a mix between Girl Scouts and Awana), so I wanted to do some baking as a thank you for their teachers.  Note to self for next time:  DO NOT WAIT TIL THE LAST MINUTE! 

So, there I am out with the 4 children, on the way to the grocery store to get the ingredients to make Beth's Spicy Cookies (these are sooo gooood!)  and Chocolate Chip Banana Bread.  In route, I decide that it would be a much better idea for the kids to make a craft for the teachers, so I turn around and head to Michaels.  I decided to call one of my buddies that I always call for ideas.  This poor friend of mine is trying to work her full time job and here I am calling her for recipe ideas (Love ya Mel!)  Long story short, we came up with coffee mugs and biscotti, homemade Almond Chocolate Biscotti to be exact.  My girl emailed the biscotti recipe to my Blackberry, you know the one I can barely operate.  Thankfully, I figured out how to retrieve the recipe and I was on my way.

Michaels had these cute little ceramic mugs that came with PERMANENT markers that the kids could decorate themselves.  Perfect!  I grabbed six of them.  Ok, so cute little mugs hand decorated by the kids with yummy biscotti inside.  Can't go wrong with that idea, right?

Next stop is the grocery store and then home to get going.  I think at this point it was about 2pm and we had to leave at 6:15 at the latest.  I figured I had plenty of time since we had decided to forgo a home cooked meal and stop for a burger.  This was situational, I really try to stay away from fast food restaurants.  Have you seen Super Size Me?  or Food Inc?  They explain it all.

Back to having lots of time.  I must have forgotten that when you are baking something and with 3 little "helpers" plus there is a toddler running around that you should at least double triple your 'Ready In" time.  The kids alternated between helping me with the biscotti and making their mugs. Their mugs looked great, they were really cute!  Unfortunately, only 4 for of the mugs made it out the door with us, one got chipped and my 3 year old decided that he wanted to color the inside of his teacher's mug and not the outside (why? no clue, other than he's 3).  Did I mention that those wonderful PERMANENT markers ended up on my less than 3 years old, wood kitchen table.  Still haven't figured out how to remedy that problem, if you have any suggestions please comment below.  The hubs had agreed to stop off at Michaels on his way home from work to get to 2 new mugs. He grabbed the plastic kids cups and not the cereamic mugs.  I really had to laugh at this point.

Only 4 of the 6 teachers that I wanted to give mugs to actually got them.  One of the non mug getters got a hug and the other one got some pretzels dipped in chocolate.  Sorry guys, we tried!

Thankfully, the biscotti worked out.  And looked beaut-i-ful! And tasted great!  All of which you are going to have to take my word for.  In my rush to get the biscotti baked, the white chocolate drizzled and them bagged and ready to go, I forgot to get a final picture.  Again, I am laughing!  Even though it was a little hectic, we did have lots of fun and we hoped that the teachers enjoyed their gifts.