When Frank Kepler was a kid, he spent a lot of time with his mom in the kitchen, watching her cook. She always liked making fun birthday cakes for her kids. She often let them look through her cake decorating books to pick out what kind of cake they wanted for their birthdays. That’s where Frank’s interest in baking started. Later on, she started making gingerbread houses and he always found a way to be involved because it was so much fun.
Frank initially wanted to go to culinary school, but ended up going to Wilkes University where he got a BS in Earth and Environmental Sciences. His mom passed away while he was in college, but he carried on her cooking and baking traditions using many of her old recipes. It was always a fun hobby.
A little while after his son was born in late 2003, the Kepler family found themselves addicted to anisette toast… a favorite for many toddlers! They would often joke that they need to figure out how to make these biscotti cookies themselves, since they were going through them so fast. Frank looked up a recipe for classic Anise biscotti and found it to be a good replacement for the store-bought biscotti cookies they were buying, because theirs were softer. They could still dunk them in coffee, tea or milk, and they wouldn’t fall apart; they could also be eaten without dunking without worrying about breaking a tooth! Over the years, Frank developed his own recipe, tweaking it here and there until he got it perfect. Anise biscotti cookies were a reliable classic, but he decided to try different flavors.
Vanilla Chip was next followed by butterscotch. Frank mainly made them for family get-togethers and parties. Everyone always liked them and always seemed excited to see what new flavor he would come up with. That’s when it started to really get fun; going into the “kitchen lab” to see what new flavors and recipes he could dream up. That experimentation is what allowed The Biscotti Mill to discover and finally offer biscotti flavors such as S’mores biscotti and our most popular seller: Coffee Cake Biscotti! Frank is always challenging himself to come up with new flavors. That’s why he says he has so many flavors — so far! There are always more flavors in the works.
The compliment we hear the most is that these biscotti are firm, but also softer than your typical biscotti. Biscotti are usually very hard. With our biscotti, you don’t need to dunk them in anything to eat them. Of course, many will say they aren’t really a true biscotti because of their texture and that may be true. But life is full of flavor and surprise. We want people to know that these are definitely NOT your grandmother’s biscotti. They won’t hurt your teeth, they aren’t as hard as a piece of kindling wood, and each and every one is packed with flavor! So, we wouldn’t want people to think they are like your grandmother’s biscotti… they are like the Biscotti Mill’s Biscotti!
After years and years of friends and family telling Frank he should sell them, because they never had biscotti like this before, Frank finally decided to start the Biscotti Mill in 2021. Every biscotto is made with Frank’s love for baking. The Biscotti Mill is for everyone who loves biscotti. We make our product available to anyone who wants an easy way to order and buy some any time. Hopefully, we can introduce more people to them along the way. Who knows where it will all lead, but it will be exciting to find out!
Enjoy!
Frank