Whole Wheat Fruit and Nut Biscotti

This is one of our favorite cookies!! Since we enjoy this so much and so often, I thought that if there was a way to make this healthier, I should. So, I decided to subsitute the regular ingredients with healthier ones, and the end result was delicious.

Ingredients
Dry ingredients
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup sliced blanched almonds
1/3 cup walnuts
1/3 cup pecans
1/4 cup cranberries
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

Wet ingredients
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence/ pure vanilla extract
1/2 a stick of butter (about 2 tsp) melted (optional)

Method
Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix together. In another bowl break the 3 eggs and whisk them. Add the vanilla essence and mix. Then add the melted butter. Now, slowly pour this egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix. Once you have added half the egg mixture, add the dry fruit and nutes. The resultant dough is a bit sticky.

Shape the dough into 2 logs approximately 10 x 3 inches long. Bake these two logs at 350° F for about 40 minutes. The logs will be light brown in color. Take these out onto a cooling rack and let it cool down for 10 minutes. Once the logs have cooled down sufficiently to handle, cut these into biscottis to the desired size. Generally about 1 X 3 inches in size. Place these back onto your baking sheet and bake them for about 10-20 minutes in the oven at 350° F.
Let the biscottis cool and enjoy! These biscottis are not as hard as the ones made with all purpose flour and remind me a lot of cake rusk.

Tips
Don't overmix the dough. Mix it just enough so that all the ingredients come together. Coat your hands with a little flour to work with the sticky dough to avoid getting your hands messy. The longer you bake the biscotti during the second baking, the harder it will get. Cut the logs into biscottis using a serrated knife to minimize crumbling and resultant crumbs.