Orange-Cherry Almond Chirpy Biscotti

So, the fam has been inquiring a lot about my ento-concoctions and–since I’m leaving for Michigan tomorrow to visit them for the holidays–I figured I should probably deliver on what I’ve been promising them: insects are delicious! I decided to go with something in which the crickets I used would blend easily (thus, not frightening my family) and wouldn’t spoil quickly–something that could be packaged up and gifted as-is. I went with biscotti. Plus, it’ll pair well with the Baileys Irish Creme, coffee-themed goodie bags some of my siblings will be receiving. I’m usually clueless about what to get them, but I feel like most of my siblings are little hedonists and enjoy imbibing as well as holiday food handouts.

I’m normally not a fan of biscotti. Every time I’ve tried it, it has always been too hard for my liking. However, in favor of a potentially softer biscotti, I opted for including some cream cheese. To my delight, it worked!

At any rate, the ingredients are as follows (it’s the holidays, so I went a little overboard on some stuff, but I assure you: this tastes insanely good!):

1/2 c. Crickets
1/2 c. Butter
1 c. Sugar
4 Eggs
1 tbsp. Sweet Almond Oil
3 c. Flour
1 tbsp. Baking Powder
2 oz. Cream Cheese
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
1/2 tsp. Orange Extract
1/2 c. Dried (& Diced) Cherries
1/4 c. Slivered Almonds

This is probably one of the easiest things to make–it took me less than 20 minutes! Preheat the oven to 350 °F, then start tossing all of the ingredients–minus the dried cherries and slivered almonds–into a blender. Blend until it kind of balls together (doesn’t take long). Super easy. Done. Boom!

Afterwards, take the dough out and put it into a mixing bowl. Add the dried cherries and almonds. Mix the contents with a spoon, or your hands, until everything looks fairly evenly dispersed. If you don’t care about getting your hands sticky, take the mixture out, put it onto a smooth surface, and then fold the cherries and almonds into the dough–it’s definitely much easier doing it that way.

Once the almonds and cherries are adequately mixed throughout the dough, get out a pan (doesn’t really matter what size), and make two, somewhat flattened, biscotti “loaves”. They don’t need to look amazing. Mine were lumpy.