Bananas Foster Biscotti (gf)

This mama doesn't "do" bananas. Used to -- but now, even their smell, ever since my first pregnancy, creeps.me.out. A couple of my fellas eat them, so I allow a banana or two in the house until it starts to become too yellow. Can't even have the peels in the compost bucket indoors -- straight out to the garden pile with it!
Imagine my chagrin upon learning Nichole deemed April's #ImprovCookingChallenge ingredients to be coconut & bananas! (Last time bananas happened, a couple years back, I didn't participate that month...)
Ah well! We're grown-ups! We'll add a little alcohol & make it work. Soooooooo... why don't we whip up a batch of these: 

The biscotti are a little crumbly, the rum drizzle drench is slightly tacky, but those are pretty darn good gluten-free, processed-sugar-free cookies! Here's the recipe:

#becauserum

Do you like almond butter? or cashew butter? or sun butter? I highly recommend coconut butter! I used Bob's Red Mill Shredded Coconut to make mine.

The resultant biscotti do not (thankfully) have a pronounced banana flavor. You could always add more banana liqueur to the cookie batter. ☺☺☺☺ The links below will take you to some more banana & coconut recipes:

An InLinkz Link-up

Spoiler alert:

iBiscotti

Christmas gifts for teachers – a great way to show appreciation for their incredibly tough job of working with my boys. Wish I could give them all $200 to spend on themselves or for room supplies… But that is not in my budget. What is in my budget is time. Time spent baking gifts with love. My gifts are remembered, evidently. Our first biscotti blitz occurred in December of 2011. So August 2012 when I was registering the boys for school, one of the teachers asked if I would be making biscotti for Christmas again. Hadn’t really thought about it at that point, but I kept it in mind... Yeah -- Here were the cookie selections for last year:As November rolled around this past year, I decided I would change it up a bit and make like 3 different flavors of my caramel corn and a couple other candies. But my youngest said, you know Mom, the teachers are asking about their Christmas biscotti.

Argh!

So I planned out my flavors. I made:

Caramel Apple

 

Snickerdoodle

 

Cherry Eggnog

 

Red Velvet

 

Reese’s® Peanut Butter

 

and Lemon Blueberry.My sophomore told me he was getting dirty looks from previous years’ teachers as he delivered his gifts……and the youngest told me a couple of his instructors were inquiring as to whether or not any more little Shinglers would follow him…

(I will be posting recipes for these 6 varieties of biscotti, sometime… )

Biscotti Blitz

One of the chores I didn't have to worry about at Christmas last year was teacher gifts.  Homeschooling is nice that way. Since our oldest was attending high school, I did make seven-inch cinnamon rolls for him to take in to his teachers.

This year, however, we've got three boys at three different schools. That's seven high school teachers, six junior high teachers, and two 6th grade teachers. (Oh, lest I forget -- two bus drivers & one bus monitor...) Love them for what they're teaching my sons & all; but don't have it in the budget to buy them all $15 St.Arbucks cards.

I love me some biscotti! I'm not a "dunker" like my husband, I'm more of a "nibble & sip-er". Give me a cup of black coffee & a biscotti for breakfast, an.ee.day!

This year I only made six different flavors. (I was a little pressed for time, as I had some cranberry scones to prepare for my online bake sale.) I mixed up some Chocolate Chocolate Chip, 

Cranberry Orange,

Apricot Walnut, 

Frosted Pumpkin, 

 Oatmeal Raisin Cookie, 

and Gingerbread Almond. 

This was about 20 dozen.

Each bag holds two of each flavor 

to make a dozen biscotti to tempt the teacher to taste. 

(I also stuck in one of these in case he or she might be in dire need...)

(source)

Fitz can attest to how delish these cookies were, because I caught him on a chair next to the table attempting to filch a second Gingerbread Almond. (I found evidence of the first under the coffee table...)