Sprinkles Biscotti

I'm somewhat in denial.

My little cousin is a college student. After graduating high school last spring, Carly is now a Freshman at Gonzaga. How did this happen?

I swear she was only recently that little girl who sent ME care packages (with Nonni's help) when I was away at Central. I even still have the paper fall wreath she made me.

Like it or not, it's now her turn to be away for school. So of course I had to send her a care package. Right away I knew I wanted to send her some cookies like my mom used to send me. Obviously the cookies had to have sprinkles in them. This is where my 24/7 Food Network-watching came in handy: one of the network's newer stars is a food blogger and cook named Molly Yeh and she's just as obsessed with sprinkles as Carly is. She even made Sprinkles Biscotti in an episode of her show Girl Meets Farm, something I immediately decided to eventually make for Carly (why not the birthday that followed, I'm not sure). They seem like the kind of cookie that travels well.

Sprinkles Biscotti (source)

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup unrefined coconut oil, melted (since I don't like to keep many coconut products on hand, I just used the canola oil I had in my pantry)
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon clear imitation vanilla (I don't have clear vanilla but the regular color seemed to work just fine)
• 1/2 cup rainbow sprinkles
• Flaky salt, such as Maldon, for sprinkling (pretty sure this is optional)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Whisk together the coconut oil and sugar in a separate large bowl. Whisk the eggs into the coconut oil mixture one at a time, and then the vanilla. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and then fold in the sprinkles.
3. Line a baking sheet with parchment, divide the dough into 2 parts and form each part into a long rectangle, about 4 inches wide. Leave a few good inches in between the rectangles because they will spread in the oven. Sprinkle the tops with a few pinches of sea salt and bake until firm and just beginning to brown around the edges, about 25 minutes.
4. Remove from the oven and reduce the heat to 250°F. Use a serrated knife to cut the rectangles into 1-inch pieces and place them on the lined baking sheet cut-side down. Bake until crisp, about 20 more minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, about 1 hour.

Along with the cookies, I sent a pair of Mariners slippers and a couple little pumpkins to decorate her dorm room for fall and its holidays (Halloween and Thanksgiving). She was so excited to get it! She also told me the cookies were gone within a week (and it doesn't sound like she shared).