The Biscocho Christmas Cookie - Low Carb Remake

We have a cookie that is a tradition in our family. It's call the Biscocho. It's a crisp little Cinnamon and Anise cookie that we've all grown up having at Christmas and other special occasions. It's as much a part of Christmas to our family as Tamales are.



Ever since 2010 we have been making these on my moms birthday. This year she said she would rather do a Chili Bean feed for her birthday but she still wanted these cookies, so I made them today.

If you would like the recipe to the original Biscocho you can find the link HERE.

After I was all done making them I wondered if maybe these could be made low carb and I came up with a low carb version that was just as satisfying as eating the real thing. My version doesn't have eggs and is made with Almond Flour instead of regular white flour and I use granulated Splenda instead of sugar.

Here's my version:

Recipe:

Oven Temperature: 350 degrees
Servings - 30 to 40 (I got 40)

2 cups Almond Meal
1/2 cup sweetener - I used granulated Splenda
1/2 cup melted Butter
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Cloves
1 teaspoon Anise

Preheat your oven.
Cream the Almond Meal and Splenda and Vanilla Extract, Cinnamon, Cloves and Anise and blend until creamy.
Add the Almond Meal and mix until dough forms.
On a lightly floured surface (use almond meal) roll out the dough. I would chill it for about 10 minutes next time to make it easier, or you could roll it into a tube then chill and cut slices with a knife.

Place on a parchment covered cookie sheet and bake 10 to 12 minutes depending on your oven. Let cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes.

As you can see, this is less than 1 carb per cookie! Of course I made these small so it just depends on how big you make them as to the carb count.

I was really feeling a bit sad that I would not get to enjoy a Biscocho today but I actually did and they were good. They were crispier than the original Biscocho but they had that Anise and Cinnamon taste that I love.

Hope you make them and hope they become a Christmas Tradition to you and your family!


 

Mom's Birthday 2013, Biscochos and Chile Colorado

Several years ago (2010) for my mom's birthday we decided to make Biscochos and it turned out that everyone in our family somehow made time and was able to show up and celebrate mom's birthday and make Biscochos with her and I took lots of pictures And shared them on THIS BLOG POST.

For anyone who doesn't know what a Biscocho is it's a delicious little cookie made with a spice called Anise that gives it a very distinctive flavor. You can find the recipe HERE.

Here's a picture of the ones we made this year. They are almost the texture of shortbread but with a cinnamony anise flavor.

We decided to try it again this year and sent out an "Open House" invitation for everyone to come from 11am until ??? to help to celebrate Mom's Birthday. We sweetened the pot by letting everyone know that mom would be making her world famous Chile Colorado. It's to die for! No recipe for that one, only mom knows the secret!

Here's mom and I again! We are always the first to show up!

We got up early and she actually tried to teach me the secrets of making her Chile Colorado but she had already prepared the Chile mixture the day before, so I was left out of the loop! By accident or by design Mom??? Hmmm!

Not to be left out Lisa arrived to help us with the prep work, so we paused first for a picture. Mom hates it that we stop to take so many pictures! Once she gets going she's all business!

Soon my brother and his gang arrived and the festivities began! Here's my brother Jaime, sister Lisa and Mom of course. What a great picture!

My brother Jaime actually likes to cook with his kids. One year he and his baby Clarissa made homemade soap for everyone. Here you see him overseeing his son Gabriel as Sarena and Clarissa watch from the side.

Next it was my time for my sister and her family. Unfortunately Sean had to work and so Baby J wasn't there, but Lisa and her son Isaac and her husband Sean still managed to have fun!

Then it was time for a Selfie. By this time mom was having fun taking pictures so we got her to smile a bit!

As you can see in this next one Mom really starts to get into the act and you see her here with my daughter April, pretending to take the rolling pin away from here while April very calmly just smiles for the camera!

Next...mom and me. Both of us are old pro's at making Biscochos, so we just pose for the camera!

Next, Lisa's turn for her picture with mom!

After beginning this day so early and after so much work Lisa and I were a bit thirsty and we happened to have a bottle of one of my favorite wines. What kind of cook cooks without wine? Not us! Sometimes we even add it to the recipe, but this time is was just for US!

By this time it's getting late, you can see outside the window that it's dark. We've had a great day and my son Jim shows up to roll out a batch of cookies with his Nana!

But we weren't done yet, my brother Fred showed up after work with his family and they each took a turn baking with Nana!

Here's mom with her youngest granddaughter Melissa. Melissa had just come from her soccer game, which they won! Yay Melissa!

Next up my brother Fred supervises his son Freddie while Melissa looks on.

Here's a beautiful picture of all my brother Fred's family. The only one missing was Beatriz as she was at work. Isn't this a beautiful picture? It's Christmas card worthy!

Freddie enjoyed it so much he's thinking of becoming a Baker! He did a great job!

Mom was exhausted after all the activity but she was so happy that we all did this for her and gave her this beautiful day! It was our pleasure. Happy Birthday Mom! 

 

Biscochos...a family tradition. Done for 2011!

Every year in our family we get together and bake Biscochos, a small, crispy cookie flavored with Anise, Cinnamon and Cloves. It's almost like a Mexican version of the Snickerdoodle. And it's very popular. One of my blogging buddies, Paula from Sweet Pea also made some recently. She calls them biscochitos. Her recipe calls for brandy! I never thought about adding Brandy.

We grew up eating these as children. Our Tia Nico would make batches and batches of these and everyone always went home with a big Folgers coffee can full of them. It wouldn't be Christmas to us without this cookie and without Tamales, which we are making next weekend.

Here's my mom, the Head Chef and Baker and her two lovely assistants, me and my sister. My sister had hurt her back a couple of days ago so she was barely able to move. She was mainly there for moral support and entertainment value!

Last year we had the whole family, including my brothers, their spouses and kids in an out throughout the day baking. It was a real family affair and you can see last years pictures HERE if you so desire. But this year because my sister had hurt her back and my mom has been suffering with pneumonia and bronchitis we figured we wouldn't make them this year, but at the last minute we said "What the heck!"

My sister's two boys, Sean and Isaac were there helping for a bit early on. Isaac brought his Ipod and played some wonderful music for us. The boy has great taste in music. Here's a few pictures of the boys with me, with my mom and with their mom.

Sean and me

Me with Isaac, he's my nephew and my Godson.

My mom and her grandson, Sean.

My Mom and her grandson Isaac.

My sister and her boys.

And here's the boys, helping? Brotherly love!

Ok, now we're ready to get busy. I like to get it started with some energy drink...in the form of Agavero Tequila! This is a delicious sipping tequila that my cousin Stella introduced me to. Unfortunately...right after this picture was taken my nephew/godson spilled it :-(

Oh well, no crying over spilt tequila when there's Biscochos to be made! Several years ago my daughter gave me this Pink KitchenAid mixer and I love it! It makes creaming the sugar, shortening and eggs a breeze. You just set it and forget it. Well except for having to scrape the sides now and again.

While this stuff is getting creamed, we sift all the dry ingredients together. Then we mix the dry into the wet slowly and you knead, knead, knead the whole thing. Then we roll softball size balls out to about 1/4 inch thick and cut with a little pizza cutter that has a curly edge, like a crimping edge. That's the little gizmo in the picture.

My daughter April had to work and didn't get to come and help and hang out with us. She always likes to use cookie cutters instead of the little crimpy pizza roller, so I made a special tray of Christmas Cookies just for her.

Then you bake and here's what you end up with!

These little guys are so good right out of the oven but they actually get better as they get cold and age. They get crispy and sweeter. We doubled the recipe and look how many it made! If you would like the recipe, please click HERE.

My mom was kinda dreading making them as they are a lot of work and she wasn't feeling up to Par and my own sis's back is broken. But between the three of us we accomplished another annual Biscochos bakeoff! Doesn't my mom look happy here? All the work was worth it just for this picture!

And so ends another lovely day in my life. Now I just have to get through a week of work and then we get to start all over in the kitchen and make Tamales next week. Tune in for that!

Recipe for Biscochos

If you don't know what a Biscocho is, please check out my previous post by clicking HERE. For those of you that know what a Biscocho is then you know that they look like these. . .

I've shared these with different people in the past and they've mentioned that they taste like a Snickerdoodle Cookie. Well they are crispy and crunchy like a Snickerdoodle Cookie...but they have one thing that Snickerdoodle Cookies don't have and that's what makes them unique.

Snickerdoodle Cookies don't have ANISE in them. Anise Seed is a graybrown oval seed from Pimpinella anisum, a plant in the parsley family. It is related to caraway, dill, cumin, and fennel. Anise Seeds smell and taste like licorice and they are native to the Middle East and have been used as a medicine and as a flavor for medicine since prehistoric times.

Ancient Romans hung Anise plants near their pillows to prevent bad dreams. They also used Anise to aid digestion and ward off epileptic attacks. I kid you not when I tell you that I put a little bowl of ground up Anise in my bathroom so that when you first walk in you get this sweet, licoricey scent. It's like an inexpensive potpourri! 

 We bought Anise in seeds this year at Cost Plus World Market. We then ground them up using my mom's magic bullet! We tried using the blender but they just sank to the bottom under the blades.  The bullet worked great, it ground them into a fairly fine powder.

Anise makes all the difference...trust me. Here's the recipe. We doubled it but I think the single is more than enough. You can also roll and cut them as you would a sugar cookie with fancy Christmas Cookie cutters but we just use a pizza cutter and cut them into squares and rectangles to honor my Tia Nico who use to make them the same way. Only she had a fancy little cutter that had a curlicue end so hers were very pretty.

Recipe......

INGREDIENTS:
1 T. Anise
3 Cups Lard (we actually use Crisco shortening)
2 Cups Sugar
10 Cups Flour
1 1/2 t. Salt
2 T. Cinnamon
1 t. Cloves
3 Eggs
1/2 Cup Milk
1 T. Baking Soda***see comment below

METHOD:
Cream the lard or shortening with the sugar until you can barely feel the sugar. I recommend a Kitchen Aid Mixer to do all the work for you, but you can do it by hand. Add eggs and continue to cream and blend.

In separate bowl sift together the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed lard/shortening, sugar and eggs. Knead Well.

Roll out about a softball size ball of the dough until it's about 1/2 inch thick although you can make them as thick or thin as you like. No rules...they're your biscochos! Own them!

Cut using the pizza cutter into small squares or rectangles or you can use pretty cookie cutters...again your choice.

Place on cookie sheets, you don't need to flour or grease or spray with cooking spray, just the plain old cookie sheet. Bake at 450degrees til browned, watch them carefully. My mom says to put them in the broiler after for just a second to brown the tops and there you are.

These Biscochos actually get better with age. When you first taste them while they're fresh and warm they're going to be good. But when they cool off and the taste of the Anise develops...OMGosh! Plus your house is going to smell beautiful. Good luck and let me know if you make them. I would love to hear about it.

***The last ingredient says baking soda...it should be baking powder. My mom says either one is good but we didn't have baking soda so we used powder and then today my cousin Stella emailed me telling me it's baking powder...so lets all just use baking powder shall we?***

Linking up to Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum.

A Birthday, A Recipe and Family for Biscocho Day!

This was a super busy weekend for being the last shopping weekend before Christmas. We also saw record rainfall here in Kern County. We broke the record last set in 1931!! Unbelievable! Unfortunately we aren't prepared for that much rain and right now we have a lot of flooding and fear of the Lake Isabella Dam bursting...so everyone is really very concerned. We hope the rain ceases soon even though the weather reporters predict it will last through Wednesday.

On Saturday my cousin David's family threw him a surprise birthday party. He was really surprised and we all had a really great time. We cousins all grew up together and it's not often we all get together, so it was so special to be able to see each other again.

Here's a picture of Cousin David and his family. David is the one with the ball cap on. His brother Steve is to the left of David, his sister Elpedia is beside him in yellow. His mom, Casi (my mom's sister) is in the long blue trench coat, then his other sister Mary Helen. Behind Mary Helen his brother Art (the oldest) and then the baby of the family, Hector. Isn't it wonderful that all his brothers and sisters were there to help him celebrate? I love you all so much!

The next day was my own dear mom's birthday. We had already planned to make Biscochos that day. Biscochos are a small, crispy cookie that we all grew up with. Our Tia Nico, my mom's sister would spend days and days before all holiday's making these cookies. She would then store them in empty coffee cans and no one left with empty hands, each family took home a coffee can filled with these delicious cookies. These probably aren't as wonderful as hers or maybe the memories of childhood can never match the present, but these are biscochos.

That's 20 cups of flour and 4 cups of sugar and 6 cups of shortening and 6 eggs plus lots of other spices and cooking ingredients. I'll share the recipe with everyone in a separate post tomorrow.

Since it was my mom's birthday we had a full house to help with the making of the Biscochos, so I'd like to share some pictures.

My job was to cream the shortening and the sugar. Last year my poor sister Lisa and I did it by hand. I forgot I had this beautiful pink Kitchen-Aid Mixer in the closet because my generous daughter April had given it to me for Mothers Day and I had never unpacked it! This mixer is the greatest! I just stood there watching everyone else work while the mixer did it all for me.

The harder job went to my sister Lisa and her youngest son Isaac (my Godson). Their job was to sift the dry ingredients and then blend the dry and wet ingredients by hand.

Here they are sifting. Isaac refused to wear an Apron! I think next year I'm going to get him a Bobby Flay manly apron!

Here Lisa and Isaac are blending dry and wet ingredients. My brother Fred is in the background, he was admiring my Kitchen-Aid Mixer.

Here Isaac is doing what we in spanish call "Amasando" (in English kneading). With 20 pounds of flour this is very labor intensive!

Isaac did a really good job, and before you knew it, it was time to start rolling out the dough! Everyone got a chance to come and roll out some dough and cut some cookies with a giant pizza cutter. They then placed them on the cookie sheets and my sister Lisa was in charge of baking them in the oven until they were that perfect golden brown. (A few batches were that perfect golden burnt color, but several members of our family love the burned ones, go figure!)

First up...Isaac under the watchful eyes of his Nana (grandmother).

 Then he and his mom made some together. See the little rolling pin? I scoffed at it when I saw it because it was such a tiny little one while the other one in the picture is mine. It turned out that everyone preferred the little one which belongs to my sister Lisa. Kudo's to you Sis!

 I didn't want to be left out, so of course I had to come and get in on the act. Don't we look like real cooks with Aprons and everything? Mine was a gift from my sister-in-law Connie and I love it! The one my sister is wearing was sewn by my mom, many, many years ago. She gave one to each of us girls for Christmas one year. The boys I believe received hand-made bathrobes that year.

Here I am again...I'm a Biscocho making machine!

 And since it's my blog...I'll post just one more picture of me :-D  As you can tell, I was pretty happy. This was a great day!

And here's my brother Fred again, popping in to check on how things are progressing. Don't worry Fred, the first batch will be ready soon!

Next up to make a batch of biscochos? Looks like it's my other brother Jaime and his daughters. The baby, Clarissa and the oldest Sarena.

Here's Jaime showing Clarissa and Lisa his technique. Jaime and his kids actually cook together quite a bit. Last year he and Clarissa made homemade scented soaps for everyone as Christmas presents. They were heavenly!

My sister Lisa and her nieces Clarissa and Sarena. I think Sarena's already sampling the first batch...she looks happy so they must be good!

Next up...my baby girl April had to make her batch too. Now April, that's a rolling pin...not a baton!

Ok, now she's down to business! Now she's got the hang of that rolling pin. She's a natural!

Biscocho making wasn't the only thing going on. We had lots of other activities happening. People would just float from one to the other.

We had some game playing going on in the living room, on the coffee table, under the Christmas Tree. That precious puppy Chorizo loved all the attention she was getting from everyone! I don't know who was winning this game of Sorry but here's Clarissa, April, my sister-in-law Connie (the gifter of the apron mentioned earlier) and my nephew, Clarissa's brother Gabriel.

The birthday girl, my mom also had some gifts to open! Here she is with my brother Jaime and Clarissa.

So what did you get mom? Let us see. Ohhhhh, how pretty, an Angel! Good job in picking this one out Jaime, Connie, Sarena, Gabriel and Clarissa!

There was also some visiting with Cousin David who had to come by to wish his Tia Tome (his Aunt Tome, my mom) Happy Birthday! Thanks for coming David! (His mom, pictured in the first picture on this post in the blue trench coat is my mom's sister.)

We also did a lot of picture taking so we could have the memory of this day forever! Here's my mom and her son's; my very handsome brothers, Fred and Jaime. Love you Bros!

My mom and her beautiful daughters :-D   My sister Lisa.and me!

My mom with her daughters and her sons.

My mom with some of her grandchildren. Missing were my brother Fred's children who came over later and my son who was AWOL for the day and my sister's son Sean who came over later and will be in a picture a little later in the post. Pictured from left to right, Gabriel, Isaac, April, Sarena, Clarissa and their Nana!

They insisted on taking a silly picture as well. . .they are kids after all :-D

My sister Lisa had purchased some miniature chocolate bottles filled with various liqueurs. I had one with Orange flavored Russian Vodka. Oh my gosh these are so good, but so rich you can only eat/drink one so no danger of getting drunk on these! If you compare the bottle to the little crystal twinkle light you can see how really miniature they are.

Here's Jaime and April both enjoying a chocolate liqueur. Don't worry, even though he's my baby brother and she's my baby girl, they're both way over 21!

My sister's son Sean was working but came by during his lunch hour to wish his Nana a Happy Birthday.

We ended the day by singing Happy Birthday to my mom and taking a group picture with her. We had to do this one is two shots. I'm in this one sitting in the chair.

And my sister Lisa is in this one sitting in the chair. I really need a tripod! Santa...if you're listening?

I can't imagine Christmas Day topping this day. What? Oh yeah, well yeah...true, there will be presents. But c'mon...this was the bestest day ever! Thank you all for making it so special!

Thank you Ale, Bebe, Little Fred and Adrianna for coming by later and spending time with Nana and for bringing that precious little Melissa to give her Nana a birthday hug before the day was over. I love you all so much!