Best Coffee makers…and a biscotti recipe
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 by Jo
With these lovely hot summer evenings we’ve been having of late, I hope you’ve all been making the most of them. Unfortunately, it’s the mornings afterwards that prove a problem. I’ve been making full use of the coffee shop down the road but having added up all of these trips, the outcome was a little scary. It made me think about the prospect of buying a coffee machine. They’re a little pricey but surely it’s cheaper than getting them from coffee shops?
The top coffee maker on Reevoo at the moment is the DeLonghi EN660. It’s got 9.0/10 with 93 per cent of people recommending it. It’s around £174 which is a lot less than I thought it would be.
For those of you on a tighter budget, the Krups KP 2000 DOLCE GUSTO BLACK is only £74 and it has some good reviews too. It gets 8.8/10 and looks a bit like a duck.
If you fancy splashing out, the Siemens TK68E570B is pretty sleek and comes in at a impressive £1,029. It looks the business but you may not be able to afford any coffee to put in it!
Design-wise, I do quite like the look of the FrancisFrancis X1 Almond. It’s around £300 so it’s still pricey but the almond colour gives it a great retro look…and they’re made in Italy so you can’t really argue.
Going all Italian, I’ve also been looking for some tasty recipes for biscotti so that I can impress people with a proper coffee-house experience. I came across this one from the food geniuses over at Yumblog. While you’re there, check out the other amazing recipes but make sure you don’t do it before lunch because you’ll only be bitterly disappointed with your ploughman’s.
Triple Chocolate Biscotti
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Skill level: Easy - medium
Makes: 50ish
Ingredients
• plain flour - 200g
• cocoa powder - 60g
• caster sugar - 150g
• baking powder - 3/4 tsp
• dark chocolate - chopped - 60g
• 3 eggs - beaten
• vanilla extract - 1tsp
• blanched almonds - toasted - 100g
• white chocolate - chopped - 100g
• salt - 1/2 tsp
Peheat the oven to 180C (gas mark 4)
Put the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, dark chocolate and salt into a food processor and pulse until powdered. Add the eggs and pulse again until a dough is formed.
Tip out onto a floured surface and knead in the almonds.
Divide into 4 and roll out into 25mm x 300mm flat logs. Place onto a paper-lined baking tray and bake for 25 minutes. Cool.
Cut the baked dough diagonally into 15mm thick pieces. Put onto a baking tray and bake for a further 15 minutes. Cool.
Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over simmering water and drizzle over the biscotti in a Jackson Pollock style.
Eat … or store in an airtight container for up to 10 days.
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