Christmas Biscotti and Snowflake Cookies ready for School Christmas Fair.

These biscotti are crunchy and fabulous and extremely useful to have in a tin.  They go perfectly with a cup of coffee and are just the ticket around Christmas for those of you not so keen on the endless array of mincemeat treats.  You can customise the biscotti to your own tastes but I couldn’t resist the red, white and green combination of dried cranberries, white chocolate and pistachios – it is this colourful trio which makes them Christmas Biscotti.  By all means leave out any of the above if they are not to your liking, I omitted the nuts when I made these for our school fair.

These would make a very elegant accompaniment to coffee after dinner, perhaps with a glass of Vin Santo into which to dip them.  Adding a bowl of clementines with their glossy leaves still attached and some big fat dates would make this suitably Christmassy.

100g caster sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

125g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

A pinch of salt

25g white chocolate chips

25g dried cranberries

25g pistachios

Preheat oven to 180. Whisk the sugar and egg together, add the vanilla, flour, baking powder and salt and mix well.  Finally gently fold in the chocolate, cranberries and pistachios.   Form the dough into an oval log and put on a parchment lined tray.  Bake for 25 minutes then turn the oven down to 160, cool for 5 minutes, cut into slices and put these slices back onto the tray and bake for a further 10 minutes, turning once.  Makes about 20.