When you create a recipe, you work for taste and texture as you pick the ingredients then play with proportions and temperatures and leaveners. You have a mental picture you pursue that leads to the final product.

This is how I went about creating Bob’s Biscotti, available on-line at our local, artisan bakery at benishsbakery.com.

A thin, tender-crisp texture was critical. It turned out a white chocolate based recipe gave me the tender-crisp texture I had been searching for. And it gave me a wonderful base upon which to add flavors and textures from various nut products.

But that mental picture is a snapshot - rather two dimensional. The finished bake good is a whole with attributes that you never even began to consider.

Such it was with my biscotti.

I chose a white chocolate based recipe for the wonderful tender-crisp texture it can give. I discovered the flexibility in taste it allows. Without butter, the spices and nuts and flavorings are more elevated. Subtlety can be rewarded as much as intensity. Variety is expanded.

It’s not so much a surprise as a natural outgrowth of what the fine white chocolate base brings.

The first actual surprise was what the baked-in white chocolate would mean for the general healthiness of my biscotti.

I did not expect my cardiologist to give them a thumbs up. But he did, saying they are a healthier snack with fats coming from cocoa butter, nuts and citrus oils. My biscotti contain no dairy fats. They are medium sweet with 9 grams of sugar per biscotto.

This was not something I planned for healthiness. It was simply part of what they turned out to be.

I planned them to be good with dry red wines because I like dry reds and thought a snack for adults should go with one of my favorite adult drinks. It dunked them in dry reds in addition to coffee, black, and herbal teas. Not only did they pair beautifully, the flavors in the biscotti did not leach into the drink, so the drink’s flavor stayed true, and they didn’t crumble and leave a gunky mess in the bottom.

I knew biscotti like mine would pair well with fruit. And they go beautifully with both fresh fruits and compotes.

But it took a couple years to find out how wonderful they are with cheeses.

It happened when we were doing demos at the former Dean and DeLuca’s Leawood location. We were passing out our biscotti right next to the charcuterie and began putting some of their cheeses on the biscotti to cross-plug.

It was as if Bob’s Biscotti had been born to be a sweet biscuit for cheese.

It makes no difference the texture or type of cheese. ‘The Citrus’, ‘My Hazelnut’ and ‘Trade Winds’ all paired beautifully with cheeses. We sampled them with brie and Beemster, cheddar and gouda, blue and parmigiano. All sensational. (All but Cotswold with its onion and chives. A great cheese, but not with my biscotti. The lone exception.)

I remember the charcuterie manager cracking a wheel of Roquefort. We paired it with ‘The Citrus’. He sold the whole wheel during our two hour demo. ‘The Citrus’ sold well too.

And why not? They were delicious together.

‘Bob’s Biscotti’ and cheese! A serendipity making for light lunches, European-styled deserts, or evening snacks.

Making a line of biscotti and having a national audience for over a decade as an authorized vendor to Nordstrom Select Coffee Bars has been a joy. It let me share the best biscotti with those seeking wonderful snacks and European style gourmet desserts.

Bob