Bonnie’s biscotti are back!

Today, biscotti are so commonplace it’s easy to take them for granted. And to a large extent, for that we can thank Bonnie Tempesta. Of course, a good one can still remind you of how special these long crunchy cookies can be. And for that, again, we can thank Tempesta.

Tempesta helped popularize biscotti in the United States back in the 1980s. She started on a shoestring budget, baking at home and selling to the San Francisco chocolate shop she worked at. In 1983, she opened her La Tempesta Bakery Confections and by 1995, it was selling 300,000 cookies a day. That added up to a lot of dough – roughly $9 million in annual revenue. And in 1997, she sold the company to Horizon Food Group and moved to the Sonoma wine country.

Now she’s back, officially starting Sept. 24, with a pet project baking biscotti that also will help benefit a couple of her favorite charities. Called Boncora (ancora in Italian means “again”), this cookie company takes her back to her roots – a news release claims they are all made by hand in her home kitchen (the top of each container reads “Realizzati Completamente a Mano”).

Perhaps. One thing’s for sure, they’re dynamite biscotti – even lighter and crisper than you remember. There are two flavors: the original almond and chocolate-dipped. The almond are $13.50 a package and the chocolate are $14.50, before shipping. Five percent of the proceeds go to Pet Lifeline Sonoma, an animal rescue group, and to Share Our Strength.