Plum Compote

Like many new expectant parents Nits and I finally succumbed and got our costco membership:hey have to save on those diapers! So as is all too common while shopping at these wholesale stores, I ended up with way more stuff than I needed. We bought this giant box of plums and it was taking forever for us to finish them off before they went bad. Finally I took the last half a dozen or so of the plums and made a nice compote out of it. I added rose water to the compote, a unique idea from 101 cookbooks, one of my favorite food blogs. This compote goes so well with toast, sweet and tangy and the rose essence makes it even better.

Ingredients

Plums 6, washed, and cut into pieces
lime juice 2 tblsp
Rose water 2 tblsp
Sugar: same quantity as plums (I had 1 cup diced plums and I used 1 cup sugar)

Method
Dice plums. Place in a bowl. Add sugar, lime juice and rose water. Let it sit for 30 minutes.

Add the plum mixture to a deep bottomed pot. Boil on low heat. Remove any froth as it forms. Once it stops foaming, remove from heat, add to jar and cool.

Almond Biscotti

Finally a post after all these days. Now that I'm in the middle of my third trimester I have slowed down so much. I get so tired after work, all I want to do is put my feet up and lie on the couch. This has resulted in procrastination on making stuff and posting it. Well, last week our friend Danielle threw me a really beautiful baby shower. All our friends from work came and we had so much fun. I got beautiful gifts and i'm so grateful for all the love people showered on us and our lil one. Anyway, I wanted to thank Danielle and her girls for the beautiful shower. I saw this really cute cookie jar in target the other day:colorful and bright, something the girls would love. So decided to fill it with something homemade. Since Danielle is not a big fan of simple sugars, I decided to make a healthy cookie and whats better than the traditional biscotti. Using no fat, low sugar and lots of toasted almonds this indeed is a very healthy yet delectable treat. Biscotti is a twice baked cookie that is great for dunking in coffee. So here is my recipe:

Ingredients (makes 2 dozen)

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup almonds, toasted and chopped
1 tsp almond extract (for a more intense flavor add 1.5 tsp)
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup sugar (maybe 1 cup if you like it a little sweeter)
3 eggs
dash of salt
1 tsp baking powder

Method:
Preheat over to 300 degrees. Combine dry ingredients. Beat eggs with almond extract and vanilla essence. Add slowly to dry ingredients mixing with an electric mixer. Add almonds and continue mixing until a dough forms. Flour your hands and surface and form the dough into logs. This recipe will make two logs about 10 inches long. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place logs on the sheet and bake for about 40 minutes. Remove and let it cool for 10 minutes on a cooling rack.

Transfer to a cutting board and use a serrated knife to slice the biscotti diagonally.

Place each piece on the baking sheet and bake again for 10 minutes on each side. Remove from oven and let it cool. A nice touch is to dip each end of the biscotti in melted choolate and letting that cool to get chocolate dipped biscottis.