Staff and volunteers at Kansas University’s Audio-Reader Network love Beverley Wilson, and not just because she comes in three times a week to read newspapers, magazines, books and catalogs to the blind and visually impaired.

Another incentive to have fond feelings toward Wilson, who lives in rural Douglas County near Lone Star Lake, is that every Monday she brings in a fresh batch of homemade biscotti for everyone to enjoy.

The Italian, twice-baked crunchy cookies — typically used for dunking in coffee or dessert wine — are a big hit among those who work at Audio-Reader, 1120 W. 11th St.

“It’s just a nice way to start the week,” says Carol Ann Vernon, administrative assistant. “Mondays are usually a tough day to come to work, and it just cheers us up to have biscotti. The volunteers and staff know that Mondays are biscotti day, and so they (the cookies) disappear real fast. Everybody loves them.”

Susan Tabor, Audio-Reader’s assistant coordinator of volunteers, is another fan of Wilson’s treats.

“There are two things that come to mind. They’re the right combination of crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. And she does neat things with flavors,” Tabor says.

“There’s one that she makes, cherry chocolate chile, and she uses dried cherries and ancho chile powder. It tastes like chocolate and cherries, with a kick. It goes pretty fast, too.”

Wilson, who has been a volunteer reader for the past five years at Audio-Reader, baked 12 batches (around 300) biscotti to sell at a recent fund-raiser for the organization, called “For Your Ears Only.”

The event was a sale of new and gently used audio products — records, cassette tapes, compact discs and stereos donated by individuals and businesses in the community.

The name of the event was a spoof on the James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only,” and Wilson (“Licensed to Bake — Audio-Reader Volunteer) even dubbed her six flavors of biscotti with names that played off of 007 movie titles.

At the Sept. 24-25 sale, Wilson offered varieties such as: “Diet Another Day” (toffee chips, cocoa and chocolate chips), “The Man with the Golden Biscotti” (lemon zest and chocolate chips) and “Dr. No Way Am I Going to Pass This Up” (dried cherries, chocolate chips and ancho chile powder).

‘All I know is, they’re gone’

Wilson, a lifelong cook, has a tendency to focus on variations of one dish or recipe at a time, just as she has done with biscotti.

She has a collection of about 350 cookbooks, and she has compiled more than 40 biscotti recipes.

“Biscotti is just one of my passions, and when I get going on something I like, I try all the recipes I can find. I have probably 25 pork tenderloin recipes. I have about 20 tomato soup recipes,” she says.

“I do that with everything. We never have the same meal twice. My husband complains, ‘Why can’t we have that (dish) again?’ When we have company, we do repeats.”

Wilson was a professor of accounting and information systems at KU for 11 years, retiring in 1998.

Her husband, George Wilson, is a distinguished professor of chemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry at KU.

The couple has lived in the Lawrence area since moving here in 1987 from Tucson, Ariz., to teach at KU.

Area resident Beverley Wilson's Frosted Lemon Almond Biscotti and Double Chocolate Toffee Biscotti go well with coffee.

Their only child, Stephen Wilson, was co-owner — along with his wife, Susie, — of PrairieFire: An American Bistro, a downtown fine-dining restaurant that has since closed.

Beverley got a good reaction from the Audio-Reader staff and volunteers when she brought in her first batch to sample.

“They said, ‘Mmm, this is nice — you can do this every week.’ And that’s how it all got started,” she recalls.

“Most of the people (there) just eat them plain, and others dip them in coffee. All I know is, they’re gone. And the volunteers and staff who work at the end of the week feel cheated.”

Sharing her home-baked goodies for the past two years has earned Wilson a nickname around Audio-Reader.

“Some people call me ‘The Biscotti Lady,'” she says.

Happiest in the kitchen

Making biscotti isn’t all that hard, according to Wilson.

The long, dry and crunchy cookies are produced by shaping the dough into a log and baking it for 30 to 35 minutes, often switching the racks in the oven.

The log is removed from the 350-degree oven, sliced into 3/4-inch cookies and allowed to cool for about 10 minutes. The cookies are laid cut-side down on a cookie sheet and returned to the oven for 10 minutes more of baking.

This process yields a crisp, dry cookie with a long shelf life if kept in airtight containers.

Recipes containing butter or oil will have a softer texture and will not keep as long as the traditional biscotti recipes that use only eggs to bind the ingredients together, Wilson says.

The secret behind the goodness of her biscotti is a consistent use of high-quality ingredients, such as Dutch-process cocoa and vanilla extract from Madagascar.

“The key to any good cooking is to use the best and freshest ingredients. People don’t realize that. It makes a big difference,” she says.

She’s right. Her double-chunk chocolate toffee biscotti are chewy and dense inside and crunchy on the outside. They’re also habit forming.

In addition to offering her biscotti to Audio-Reader, Wilson brings one batch of the cookies each Monday to The Cup, 4000 W. Sixth St. The store sells them for 95 cents apiece.

But that’s as far as Wilson plans to go, as far as baking for profit.

“People say they’ll pay me for the ingredients if I’ll make them for their board meetings. I don’t want to do that,” she says.

Nah — she just does it for the enjoyment of sharing.

“I love to cook, and it (making biscotti) enables me to cook and George and I don’t have to eat it all. I’m happiest when I’m in the kitchen.”