A Mundle Bread Tradition

My mom has been making mundle bread --
A type of biscotti like cookie for as long as I can remember.

Traditionally, they were plain with just pecans added and sprinkled with powder sugar when served. Over the years, though my mom started to switch things up -- she added chocolate or butterscotch chips to the batter; then she started filling them with jam. Everyone in the family, and extended family has their favorites. Sherene likes plain, Rick likes his filled with blueberry jam, Maurene is the fan of butterscotch and Aragorn likes his apricot jam.

Last year, at 88, my mom really did not feel up to making any, so I thought it was time for me to give it a try. I made the favorites and shipped them off with all the other holiday treats, and a special batch was made for mom. This year when she visited for Thanksgiving there were batches made, and the recipe shared.

I also found out there were some MB lovers in David's family, too. Over brunch, as we planned our 2nd annual holiday baking day my niece Lauren and I chatted over the possibilities of making them with chocolate batter...hmmm; how to do this successfully.

I ran into a new product (to me) and gave it a try.
Here is the original recipe:
3 eggs
3/4 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1 TB baking powder
1 Ts vanilla
3-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped nuts

to this I added 4 TB of

This worked, but it isn't quite right yet.

Not chocolately enough -- a little on the sweet side--think next time I will add 2 TB of the sweet ground cocoa, then add 2 TB unsweetened ground cocoa.

To make the cookies after the dough is made --
Split dough into 4 parts -- roll each into a long log on a large cookie sheet.
To fill press a furrow into the dough log, fill with your favorite jam (my is Trader Joe's cranberry sauce) and pinch dough closed.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes until slightly browned; then take cookies out slice logs and turn them over. Lastly, bake cookies again from between 8 -10 minutes. (8 for softer cookies -- 10 for dryer crunchier cookies.)

I like experimenting with recipes.
Do you?

The holidays are officially here. WOOHOO!!