Trish Lobenfeld’s Biscotti
I first met Trish Lobenfeld (http://www.cookinginconnecticut.com) at this year’s Roger Smith Cookbook Conference. At a conference session devoted to showcasing new cookbook and food apps and ideas, she presented her “biscotti project.”
She’s always loved biscotti, but her attempts at creating biscotti led to what she thought were less than optimal results — the biscotti were too crumbly. As a culinary professional who teaches and develops and tests recipes, she was convinced great biscotti were possible.
After research and development and tweaking, she perfected a biscotti recipe. The biscotti had a nice “snap” and were not overly sweet. After mastering the basic recipe, Trish was hooked and began experimenting with all sorts of different biscotti flavors and varieties.
At the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference Trish had samples of some of her biscotti. I tried the Peaches & Cream Biscotti, which I have to say, were excellent.
She presented at the Cookbook Conference in order to help clarify what her next steps should be to launch a biscotti business.
I sat down with Trish six weeks after the Cookbook Conference to find out what progress she’s made with the biscotti business.
These are her updates:
— To date she’s developed recipes for 29 sweet biscotti, 4 savory biscotti, and 2 gluten-free biscotti. Some of the more intriguing sounding flavors include:
— Carrot Cake Biscotti Dipped in White Chocolate
— Cherry, Pistachio & Vanilla Bean White Chocolate Biscotti
— Pumpkin, Walnut & Dark Chocolate Biscotti
— Candied Lemon, Almond & White Chocolate Biscotti
— Chocolate –Covered Strawberry Biscotti
— Mango & Toasted Coconut Biscotti
— Red Velvet Dipped in White Chocolate Biscotti
— Basil Pesto Biscotti
— Peanut Butter & Chocolate Biscotti (gluten-free)
— She’s exploring an arrangement with a food production facility and will begin scaling up her recipes for production of larger batches
— She started identifying local stores and restaurants who might be interested in carrying her biscotti
— A cookbook deal may be in the works. And she’ll have gluten-free recipes available for all of her biscotti.
We’ll check back with her to see how the business is progressing.
Dessert Surveillance 