My nearly seventeen-year-old hasn’t had much appetite lately. I’ll do anything for him, and that includes feeding him biscuits at breakfast if that’s what we need to do! He has one coffee a day which he loves, and so I invented Breakfast Biscotti which he appreciates and I get all the feelings watching him quietly dunk biscotti into coffee, and I wonder where the world will take him and whether he’ll dunk biscuits into coffee in Italy one day and think of our breakfast table and his chattering sisters and his mother flapping around and his father coming in from milking turning our precious coffee machine back on saying, ‘there’s BISCOTTI?!’

Makes approx. 30 pieces. In an airtight container these have a shelf life of at least 5 weeks.

Ingredients:

2.5 cups plain flour
1 cup sugar (caster is ideal but white is fine)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½  teaspoon salt
3 large eggs – lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup of dried cherries (or cranberries)
1/3 cup of choc chips
1/3 cup of rolled oats

Method:

Preheat your oven to 160°C (150 fan forced.)

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl or jug mix the eggs and vanilla and milk together. Add this into the dry mix and stir well until a dough forms.  Add the cherries and choc chips and oats and mix well.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead several times. Halve dough and then make each half into a slightly flattened log. Place the logs onto a greased or lined baking tray.  Bake in middle of oven until golden – 25-30 minutes.

Take out and cool for 10 minutes.

Then cut each log diagonally into slices and return slices in a single layer onto the baking sheet. Bake again in oven turning once for about 10 minutes each side – just be careful they can start to overcook very quickly.

Other good “breakfast” biscotti combinations –

• almonds and oats
• pistachios and orange zest
• walnut, cinnamon and hazelnut
• white chocolate and cranberry