Hey! What's up guys? So.. you are always asking me if I can post baking recipes, if I could talk about my baking, if I could start a baking blog, if I can do all these other things and I finally decided I would just go for it and try to make a crappy vlog video with my incredibly limited knowledge of this technology. For you! Ahh!

I'm going to be baking the joy of baking recipe for gingerbread biscotti. It's not one of those recipes that, like, pretends to be healthy, like I've definitely looked up, you know, recipes before and it'll be like "Super Healthy Cookies cause we've got cranberries and pecans in 'em" and I'm like that's- you're not fooling anybody with that one. "But they're vegan!" 

I just like this recipe because, uh, I usually can make it with stuff that I've got on hand, but that's only if you've got kinda weird ingredients on hand, I guess. I don't know if most people keep unsulfured  molasses handy, crystallized ginger... but I do!

Alright, Sweet! I washed my hands. That was step number one. I used some dish soap. Don't know if that's important. 

Step number one is preheat oven to 350 degrees or 177 degrees Celsius and place oven rack in the center of the oven. Well, that looks pretty good.

The first thing it calls for is three quarter cups of hazelnuts or pecans or walnuts... Um, toasted. So I'm gonna do that. Oh! That's what the preheating was for. Where's my nuts at? One quarter cup. I'm gonna do it this way. One, two.. Yeah I'm bad at measuring. I'm like, " yeah! That's about right. I can do this. " 

I think about baking kinda like, it's this therapy for me, and people take baking really seriously, and that's great. I know a lot of people who aim to, uh, make the most delicious things and have the best and the crispiest meringues and the crunchiest cookies, and I don't really care. For me, baking is just the joy of, of making something and smelling it bake in the oven and them getting to look at it when it's done and it's all warm and then shoving it in your face...
People spend too much time and too much money and energy worrying about dieting. I'm just chopping these pecans! Throw them on this pan. 

I'm gonna eat this one cause it's too big. Alright! I'm gonna stick these in here. 

So it calls for one cup of old fashioned rolled oats, and half of those have to be ground up in a blender or food processor. Alright, we're gonna process this. Whoa. Whoa! Settle down!

Here's the half cup of ground, finely ground oats. Derp. Derp. 

They smell fragrant. 

One and three quarter cup all purpose flour. Half cup, half cup plus half cup equals one cup. One one quarter, two one quarter, three one quarter. 

You know, because people throw hissy fits about unsalted versus salted butter, and I know if a recipe calls for unsalted butter, your use unsalted butter. But you know what? I'm not gonna go the the grocery store just to get unsalted butter. And I'm not gonna de-salt the butter that I have because I don't even know how you do that. And you know what? Nobody has ever bitten into a cookie that I've given them and been like, "No! This is salted butter! Mehhh!" 

Normally you don't add your sugar with your flour, but that's what the recipe says, so imma do it.

There's (Whoap! Whoap! Yerp!) three quarter cup dark brown sugar. Now a half teaspoon kosher salt. Normally, you don't want to measure over your bowl, but I trust my ability. Whoap! Oap. 
one teaspoon baking powder and a half teaspoon baking soda
three quarter teaspoons ground cinnamon
one half teaspoon ground ginger
one eighth teaspoon ground cloves 
Now we mix these together!

Oh boy!

Okay, wet ingredients. We're going to mix together 2 large eggs. Yeah! Whooooo! Whooo-- aw that's.. Dammit! I got a shell in there. Get a wet finger and then you can reach in there. Oh! Because then you can break up the surface tension of the egg. 

A quarter cup molasses. I have the belief that any time you need to measure something sticky, if you have to measure something greasy with the same cup, do the greasy thing first because then the sticky stuff will come out. Molasses is like a byproduct of refined sugar processing. You have three different kinds of molasses:

• unsulfured molasses- which is derived from the freshest cane sugar, the most ripe, the ready to go can sugar 
• you have sulfured molasses, which is molasses which is refined from green sugars, so it's of like a lesser quality
• and then you have black strap. Black strap is the third tear in the hierarchy of molasses, and they only use it for like, as a binder in animal foods. 

I personally love the smell of molasses, and I love the way it tastes. I know some people who just absolutely cannot stand the smell and/or taste of molasses cause it's got this licoricey kind of... I don't even know how you'd explain it. Oh! Whoa! Woooa! That a lot of molasses! 

Two tablespoons olive oil, and then you need a half a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract. Madagascar vanilla extract DOUBLE STRENGTH. What did I say?

Now I use my whisk, whisking. Do you see it whisking? Alright, let's see if I can whisk. I'm gonna spill this all over everywhere. See down here? Whisking! That whisking action! 

This recipe also calls for three quarter cup of dark or golden raisins in the biscotti, but I don't have raisins. Although, I do have candied ginger, which I think is wayyyy better, so I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna chop that ginger. 

By the way, Kris Helgen, the guy who discovered the olinguito was in the Field Museum's collection, just tweeted at me, saying like,"okay, thanks for everything you do about advocating for natural history museums" and I kinda fangirled inside a little bit. That is my equivalent of a rock star. 

Okay, now we're going to add the wet stuff to the dry stuff. Let's bring you guys over for this one. 

Mix until just incorporated. Alright! That's what it looks like when you get everything combined. And add the nuts... Magically there are nuts! And... There are the nuts and the ginger bits. Don't over mix it! Come on, stand mixer! Whoa! Settle down, stand mixer. 

And then scrape down the sides. It should be pretty sticky, if you're  makin' this at home. Mahh! Cookie dough!

So I've washed my hands again, now I'm gonna take some parchment paper - cover my baking sheet. There we go. Whoops. There we go. Maybe.. Op..  Now we take the dough ( I'm just gonna use my hands cause that's how we do it) it's sticky! It's weird! Just grab it and get your hands all up in it. 

While led I was offloading the footage onto my computer, I decided I'd go ahead  and make the logs because it's not that interesting. I just used my hands and kind of squished them out to be the appropriate shape. Here's one of them. You know, it's about 12 (whoops! whoa!) about 12 inches long by two inches. Just as long as you get a relatively consistent shape, it's pretty good. 

Whoo! 

They're both pretty much done. This one's  not quite done. 

Look under it... Whoa! Nice! Now both of the bricks of biscotti are baked for the first time, so now we're gonna cut them and then bake them again. 

Get a cutting board. My special knife is  a shark knife. It's serrated. 

Alright. I moved the camera so you can hopefully see this. I've got a brick of biscotti and you're gonna cut them at an angle cause if you cut them straight across you're not gonna get as many because geometry. I'm cutting them like an inch thick and I try not to break them. 

Whoops! You know, if you cut a piece off you can always eat it. Oh my God, holy crap! These are really good. 

You our should have something that looks like that! Look at it! Look at it! They're all so pretty.. Except for this one. I broke that one a little bit. 

And then I'm  gonna line them on the baking sheet, and you put them face-down. And then cut the other one! Look, it's a biscotti piece! Naughhh! 

Then they look like that! Aw, look at that baking sheet! Sweet, we're gonna put them back in the oven. 

Put out them back in for six to eight minutes and them I'm gonna take them out and flip them over so the other part of them bakes and then I'm gonna bake them for another six the eight minutes. Now here we go   
I reduced the heat temperature from 350 to 300 degrees cause... That's what it said to do. 

This is is after the first six minutes, and they're really hot! Yeah, they're really hot. Woah boy!

and.. They're done! Pretty much. They're pretty toasty. We're gonna take them off this tray and let them cool on this other tray. They're pretty.. Oh, they're hot. 

They  can be stored in an airtight container for, apparently, six to eight weeks, but I don't know who would uh let them sit around for that long cause I know I can't. I will probably eat all of them before this video is done being edited. Oh! It's too hot! My mouth is on fire! 

You did it! Good job. Now I'm gonna eat them.