Hi First name / friend!

 

Alexia here bringing you some Holiday cheer and SUGAR!

 

I love the holiday season more than most things. The festive atmosphere lightens my mood. The New Year, with its fresh blank page just waiting for me to fill, sits just around the corner. This time of year has its difficulties and its highlights, and it’s never not bringing all the complexities of life throughout the season.

You know what helps me cope, COOKIES*.

If you love baking I bet you have a rotation of greatest hits you go to year after year (lol, feel free to reply to this with your favorite, I love collecting cookie recipes). I thought I’d share this recipe that is on my greatest hits list! These biscotti are adapted from a couple of different recipes, one from Diane Morgan featured in a 2003 issue of Bon Appetit, and one from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook.

Although Biscotti require two bakes in the oven, they are very easy to make.

Makes approximately 36 to 42 biscotti

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons salted butter at room temperature

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

Zest of one orange and two lemons

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon almond extract

¾ cup dried cranberries (can be sweetened or unsweetened according to your preference, I like the “reduced sugar” ones)

½ to ¾ cups shelled whole pistachios (can be salted or unsalted also according to your preference, I like the unsalted)

 

Preheat the oven to 325F. Line three large baking sheets with parchment paper or reusable non-stick baking liners. You’ll use one of these immediately and the other two for the second bake.

 

Stir the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, this is just going to be your dry ingredient bowl not your main mixing bowl.

 

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars in a larger mixing bowl until a little lighter in color and fluffy, about 1 ½ to 2 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time until the mixture is smooth. Mix in the vanilla, citrus zest and almond extract.

 

Beat in the flour on a low speed until it is just blended. Stir in the cranberries and pistachios until evenly mixed. This is a pretty sticky dough once mixed. Gather the dough together with floured or greased hands on a floured surface and divide the dough in half.

 

Roll each half into a 15 inch log about 1 ¼ inch wide. Carefully transfer the logs to one of your baking sheets and space them about 3 inches apart.

 

Bake the logs about 25 to 28 minutes, they should be just about firm to the touch and still pale in color.

Keep the oven on and let the logs cool for 10 to 15 minutes. Keep the logs on the parchment and transfer to a cutting board. Using a serrated knife and gentle pressure cut the logs crosswise into ⅝ ish inch thick slices. Place slices with a cut side down on your two parchment lined baking sheets spacing them evenly. Bake until firm and slightly golden for about 16 minutes, flipping each biscotti on the sheet halfway through baking.

 

Transfer biscotti to cooling racks and let cool completely. Stored at room temperature I have found these last about a week or more. I hope you enjoy making and eating these!

In other news, I am so very happy to share that I’ve been able to make some ornaments and a very small quantity of ready to ship pottery pieces. Boy has it been a year of challenges in my ceramics creating world. It is an unfailingly difficult medium always but when there’s a big fail boy is it big. I lost two huge batches of my work this Summer due to technical errors completely out of my control. First, I had a tried and true glaze I’ve used for years misfire on a kiln full of work, and then lost everything I remade plus some additional pieces to a kiln firing way over temperature. It has taken me months to get back on schedule after getting to the bottom of the errors. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be here in my studio caught up and painting ornaments now. I’m in my creative flow again.

I have a new feature on my site that is going to help me with my production going forward. You can now sign up on a waitlist for each and every sold out item in my shop. I’ll be referring to these signups to plan my making. Each list will receive a notification ahead of time with the opportunity to order things as I make them. I’ll look forward to seeing how this goes as I move away from a pre-order system.

 

My ready-to-ship sale will go live on my website www.alexiamarcelleabegg.com on December 10th at 3PM CST so mark your calendar! You’ll find ornaments, pottery, gift items like my new notebook sets from Ruby Star Society, fabric, kits and more.

Wait, one more fun thing! American Patchwork and Quilting’s February '24 issue is out now so I can share my log cabin quilt that made the cover! Fellow fabric designer, Joanna Figueroa of Fig Tree Quilts invited me to be the guest artist in the first of her new recurring feature in APQ magazine. I loved collaborating with Joanna. We each created a quilt using the traditional Log Cabin quilt block as a jumping off point. 

It was so much fun to see where each of us went with the design and I love how they look together on the cover. My quilt was made with my next collection to hit stores, Meadow Star and I have pre-order kits available in my shop. 

 

Thank you so much for your enthusiasm for my work and I wish you the best of times and all the cookies this Holiday season.

 

Warmly,

*Best paired with sewing time and therapy to become a trifecta of coping.