Crunchy Cardamom Cookies
These hazelnut biscotti are really cardamom cookies and they are helping take me back to roaming the streets of Rome and Florence.
During our trip in Italy, we treated ourselves to cornetti with some of our cappuccinos. We loved the baked goodies offered at the cafes and bars (not to mention how inexpensive they were).
We thought cornetti referred to all pastries, but on our last day we discovered that it was actually just the croissants.
Luckily that’s what we ordered most of the time, but there were at least a couple of mistaken orders! We had some amazing cornetti filled with pudding, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and one whole wheat version filled with strawberry jelly.
Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I wanted the coffee or the cornetti more!
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Cardamom Cookies
Because we stayed in apartments during our trip, we visited the local markets to buy food for breakfast and the occasional dinner at home.
Just like my dad taught me, I ogled at every bakery case and bread basket offering. I wanted to buy and try everything but what really caught my eye were the biscotti.
I almost always have lemon biscotti in our house to enjoy with my iced coffee (his espresso on the weekends), but I wanted to try the real thing and see how they compared!
We bought one bag to bring home and taste. They are obviously super delicious and don’t taste too much different than my homemade version.
Inspired by new flavors and craving a cardamom and nutella combination after a recent honey cardamom cake I made recently, I whipped up a batch of these hazelnut biscotti to enjoy with my coffee.
They aren’t cornetti in a cafe in Roma, but they’re pretty tasty just the same!
Where do you get cardamom?
Cardamom is an Indian spice, but it’s available in most grocery stores or you can buy it online. You want to make sure you get ground cardamom and not the ‘pods’ they come in.
The pods are like a protective shell round the cardamom seeds (which are then ground). Breaking open the cardamom pods requires a mortar and pestle along with quite a bit of patience!!
How to Chop Hazelnuts?
If you’ve ever tried to chop hazelnuts (or almonds) with your standard chopping knife like you do with pecans or walnuts, you know the feeling of getting nowhere and flinging nuts all over the kitchen!
My secret? If you’re having trouble chopping these nuts, carefully, use a serrated knife (yep, the big bread knife). The teeth sink easily into the nuts, preventing the fling!
Since the hazelnut biscotti require chopping midway through the baking process, you won’t be adding any more dishes to your sink either!
More Biscotti Recipes
Want more biscotti in your life? I always do. Try these lemon biscotti, orange biscotti, and these cranberry orange biscotti!
And if you love cookies as much as we do, you’ll love these peanut butter granola cookies, muesli cookies, saffron shortbread, key lime cookies, and matcha cookies!
CARDAMOM COOKIES
Ingredients
- 2 Cups All Purpose flour
- ¾ Cup cornmeal
- 1½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1½ teaspoon cardamom
- 1 Cup sugar plus more for sprinkling on top
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- ¾ Cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts*
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and cardamom. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine sugar and eggs until thoroughly combined. Add in vanilla and then flour mixture. If dough doesn’t come together easily, add up to one tablespoon water. Stir in hazelnuts. Let dough stand five minutes.
- With moist hands, divide the dough in half. Form into two equal mounds (about one-inch high). With wet hands, pat the top of the mounds. Sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake for thirty minutes until lightly browned. Cool for five minutes.
- Cut mounds into ¾-inch diagonal slices. Arrange biscotti on their side on pan. Bake 20-25 minutes until cookies are golden brown.
- Let cool completely.
I was craving a cookie with cardamom, which happens to be my favorite spice and this recipe fit the bill. I did make some modifications to the recipe based on taste and what I had available. I had on hand Bob’s Red Mill whole grain cornmeal and subbed pistachios for the hazelnuts called for in the recipe. I also added 1/4 tsp Fioiri di Sicilia in addition to vanilla paste extract. The combination of cardamom, citrus and pistachio just seemed right to me in the flavor profile. Except for those changes, I stayed true to the recipe which came together beautifully. I love the crunch of these biscotti and the lovely crumb thanks to the cornmeal. I’m curious as to why the author chose to call these “cookies” as they are a biscotti, meant to be dipped in coffee, tea or wine, so no need to add butter to the recipe. But perhaps the author was hoping to cast a wider net in calling these “cookies”. At any rate, she caught me in that net and I’m happy for having been caught and so is my Italian husband who loves these biscotti’s. This recipe is a keeper!
Hi Robin! I’m so glad you like the recipe. And, yes, these are absolutely biscotti, but the internet searches for “cookies” much more than biscotti, so I have to generalize it. Happy Baking!
I made these and it seems to me that some kind of liquid is missing….maybe melted butter or oil as it was very very dry. I ended up adding some melted butter. I doubled the recipe as I love cardamom….perhaps should have waited til the next batch. They tasted awesome though and I loved the texture created by the cornmeal
Hi Patricia! I’m so happy to find a fellow cardamom lover. It’s such an underappreciated spice.
Yes, these biscotti are VERY crunchy – perfect for dunking into a drink to soften up (but not disintegrate). Other biscotti recipes to have melted butter or oil, so you can certainly do just what you did for a softer cookie (that doesn’t require the dunking).