You can’t go past a popular Italian recipe like Almond Biscotti. Complete with the classic crispy crunch, Cantucci is the perfect sweet treat, especially paired with a glass of vin santo.
Why We Love This
Cantucci have such a long shelf life, so they’re great for baking a big batch to share as gifts or take as travel snacks. They pair so well with coffee, we love any excuse to have these biscuits for breakfast in the morning!
While they’re baked twice and look quite fancy, they’re actually very simple to mix together and make, with only 10 minutes prep. That’s a win, win for us!
What is Cantucci?
Cantucci is a type of traditional Italian biscuit known as biscotti. It’s baked twice to give it an ultra dry and crunchy texture, and usually paired with a sweet dessert wine such as vin santo or in some areas muscat.
Cantucci is from the northern Tuscany region in the town of Prato and is exclusively made with almonds. If it features fruit or other nuts, it’s just a regular biscotti (twice cooked biscuit) and not cantucci.
What You’ll Need
Get out your baking essentials – we’re going to need all purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, eggs and butter. Then what really brings this recipe together is the almonds.
- Almonds – Use unpeeled, whole almonds for your cantucci. You can also use almond slivers or blanched almonds in a pinch. If you’re not a fan of almonds, you can use pistachios, dried fruits or macadamia. While it won’t be traditional cantucci anymore, it’ll still taste great!
- Almond essence – A teaspoon of this really gives the biscuits that distinct almond flavour. You can substitute with vanilla essence.
How to make Italian Almond Biscotti:
2. 3. 4.
- Pre-heat your oven to 180˚C / 360˚F. In a large mixing bowl, add all the dry ingredients (all purpose flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) except for the almonds.
- Make a small well in the middle, then pop in the wet ingredients (eggs, butter and almond essence).
- Using a dough whisk or wooden spoon, work from the middle out to combine all the ingredients into a rough dough.
- Finally, add the almonds then using your hands, knead the dough until all the ingredients are well combined.
5. 6. 7.
- Lightly dust a flat surface with flour. Divide the dough into two portions, then roll each portion into a log shape around 30 cm / 12 inches long. Move both to a baking tray lined with baking paper or parchment paper. Make sure there is enough room between each log, and slightly flatten the tops.
- Pop into the oven and bake for 25 minutes until lightly browned. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Using a cutting board and serrated knife, place one log on a 45˚ angle, and slice into diagonal pieces around 2 cm / 3/4 inch wide. Repeat for the second log.
- Place each piece of cantucci back onto the baking tray, and cook again for another 10 minutes at 180˚C / 360˚F.
- Once removed, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before storing. Cookies will dry out and firm up even more once cooled.
Wandercook’s Tips
- Storage – Stored in an airtight container, these will last around a month due to their dry and crunchy texture!
- Gift Them – Due to their long shelf life, cantucci make the perfect homemade gift. Especially alongside some Sicilian cuddura!
- Serrated Knives Work Best – When slicing the biscotti after the first bake, use a serrated or bread knife to cut them. This helps to get a nice flat cut and slice through the almonds smoothly without breaking the biscuits.
FAQs
Cantucci are regular sized biscotti, whereas cantuccini are the smaller version. If you can pop it in your mouth in one bite, you’re eating cantuccini, if not, it’s cantucci! Either way, they’re both a type of biscotti and thoroughly delicious.
Biscotti means twice cooked in Italian. Cantucci are an almond biscotti, and are baked twice to achieve the ultra dry and crunchy texture.
Most definitely yes! Traditionally it’s dunked into a sweet Tuscan dessert wine known as Vin Santo, but it’s just as good with a coffee!
Variations
- Butter – Our almond cookies feature a little butter to soften the mix just slightly. Very traditional recipes exclude this, so if you want an ultra dry result, leave the butter out or swap it out for a tablespoon of water instead.
- Lemon or Orange Zest – If you love citrus, feel free to add the zest of 1 lemon or orange to the recipe.
Bake these popular sweet treats next:
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Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 cups all purpose flour 260g / ½ lb
- 1 cup sugar 200g / 7 oz
- 1 cup almonds skin on, 130g / 4.5 oz
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp almond essence
- 1 tbsp butter
- ¼ tsp salt
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 180˚C / 360˚F.
- In a large mixing bowl, add all the dry ingredients (all purpose flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) except for the almonds.
- Make a small well in the middle, then pop in the wet ingredients (eggs, butter and almond essence).
- Using a dough whisk or wooden spoon, work from the middle out to combine all the ingredients into a rough dough.
- Finally, add the almonds then using your hands, knead the dough until all the ingredients are well combined.
- Lightly dust a flat surface with flour. Divide the dough into two portions, then roll each portion into a log shape around 30 cm / 12 inches long.
- Move both to a baking tray lined with baking paper or parchment paper. Make sure there is enough room between each log, and slightly flatten the tops.
- Pop into the oven and bake for 25 minutes until lightly browned. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.
- Using a cutting board and serrated knife, place one log on a 45˚ angle, and slice into diagonal pieces around 2 cm / 3/4 inch wide. Repeat for the second log.
- Place each piece of cantucci back onto the baking tray, and cook again for another 10 minutes at 180˚C / 360˚F.
- Once removed, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before storing. Cookies will dry out and firm up even more once cooled.
Video
Recipe Notes
- Almonds – Use unpeeled, whole almonds for your cantucci. You can also use almond slivers or blanched almonds in a pinch. If you’re not a fan of almonds, you can use pistachios, dried fruits or macadamia. While it won’t be traditional cantucci anymore, it’ll still taste great!
- Almond essence – A teaspoon of this really gives the biscuits that distinct almond flavour. You can substitute with vanilla essence.
- Butter – Our almond cookies feature a little butter to soften the mix just slightly. Very traditional recipes exclude this, so if you want an ultra dry result, leave the butter out or swap it out for a tablespoon of water instead.
- Lemon or Orange Zest – If you love citrus, feel free to add the zest of 1 lemon or orange to the recipe.
- Storage – Stored in an airtight container, these will last around a month due to their dry and crunchy texture!
- Gift Them – Due to their long shelf life, cantucci make the perfect homemade gift.
- Serrated Knives Work Best – When slicing the biscotti after the first bake, use a serrated or bread knife to cut them. This helps to get a nice flat cut and slice through the almonds smoothly without breaking the biscuits.
Nutrition
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