Cappuccino Biscotti

This is an incredibly fiddly, but unbelievably divine recipe. It has the ‘WOW’ factor, and my theory is; if you are going to go to the trouble of making something fiddly, it needs to blow you away. And this does.

Ingredients
⅓ cup dry coffee
3 tbs boiling water
½ cup self raising flour
1½ cups plain flour
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs lightly beaten
¾ cup (110g) toasted macadamia nuts

Decoration
⅓ cup (50g) white chocolate melts (melted)
Coffee beans (or chocolate covered coffee beans), icing sugar, cocoa powder

Method
Combine coffee & water in small bowl, stir until coffee is dissolved, cool.
Sift flours & sugar into large bowl, stir in eggs & coffee mixture, mix to a smooth dough.
Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface, knead in nuts.
Divide dough in half, roll each half into a 20cm log.
Place logs on a greased tray approx 7cm apart.
Bake in moderate oven for about 30mins or until lightly browned & crusty; cool on tray.
Using a serrated knife, cut each log diagonally into 1.5cm slices.
Place biscotti in single layer on greased tray.
Bake in moderate oven (175°C) for about 25mins or until biscotti is crisp.

Once cool, stand on their flat side, pipe a small amount of melted white chocolate onto the top of each piece and decorate with a coffee bean.
Dust with icing sugar and then sifted cocoa.

Lemon Meringue Pie

This is one of my favourite things to bake for people, because it looks so impressive, it tastes great, and it’s dead simple. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t even like Lemon Meringue Pie!

Ingredients
Base
2tbs butter
¼ cup sugar
1 cup self raising flour
1 egg yolk

Filling
1 tin condensed milk
2 egg yolk
Juice & rind of 2 lemons

Meringue
3 egg whites
½ cup sugar

Method
Mix base ingredients in food processor.
Press into base and wall of pie plate (for presentation purposes, I roughly line the pie plate with baking paper, it means at the end you can lift the whole pie out and it looks fabulous.
Nb: The mixture resembles fine powder at this stage, but keep pressing, it will all work out.

Mix filling ingredients in bowl, pour into base

Beat egg whites until very stiff, stir in sugar. Spread on top of pie.

Bake @ 120° for 1 hour