Cornmeal Biscotti

Good morning 2013!  Let's greet the new year with a deep breath, coffee and biscotti.  Yum.   I'm trying to step away from all the sugar, cookies and chocolate I've been devouring since the beginning of December.  Maybe the key is to take baby steps. 
While biscotti isn't healthy, it's also not coated in chocolate or glazed with icing.  These cookies don't have a lot of fat, and they have a satisfying crunch.  They are also very good with a healthy fruit salad.  They are just the right combination of crunchy, lemony and mildly sweet. 
I found the recipe on David Lebovitz's site living the sweet life in Paris. The cornmeal adds extra texture and crunch.  I used sliced almonds instead of walnuts and these cookies turned out absolutely perfect.  Click through for the recipe if you want to bake this.  I will be making them again very soon. 
Biscotti is actually plural for biscotto, which means twice cooked.  When you mix up the dough and shape it into loaves, be aggressive and really press it into the shape you desire because it will seem crumbly.  Don't fret, it will bake into beautiful lemony puffy goodness.   Allow it to cool, then slice it up and bake again to achieve the totally dry crunch of perfect biscotti.  These dry cookies were first used to preserve bread, especially for long journeys because they wouldn't get moldy.  However, I doubt those ancient biscotti benefited from lemon zest, and they were traditionally made without added butter or oil.  The method is the same, but the ingredients have been tinkered with over the decades and there are loads of recipes for all kinds of biscotti.  This is one of the very best I've tasted.