Valentine's Day

I made one half of the red beet bun dough and let it rest for 2 days. I read somewhere that it takes a while for whole grain flours to absorb the water in recipes and become fully hydrated. I also read that this is especially important for spelt flour.


I cheated and grated the beets in the food processor, so I avoided the red stained mess.

The dough had a really pretty red, almost purple color. I made the buns according to the directions and they came out a nice red color. They were moist inside and very tasty. Mike commented that he thought they tasted like they had potatoes in them, but then again he's Irish. :)
I was wondering if these could be made with grated carrots instead of beets..hmm..

The chocolate espresso bread was somewhat of a challenge to work with, very wet, and a very interesting texture. I used Ghiradelli chocolate and didn’t have the bitter taste that some of the bakers talked about. I was fooled in that the tangerine bars looked like brownies, so my taste buds were geared up for a sweeter treat, but with a dollop of chocolate ice cream on top the contrast was very tasty! With the left over dough I made a small loaf of bread that was pretty good with peanut butter.

As a side note, for Valentine’s Day I made a buttermilk chocolate cake (not with the bread dough), a one 9 inch layer that I sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar over a cut out heart stencil. It looked very pretty and tasted pretty good too. One note though, don’t sprinkle it until right before you get ready to serve because the sugar fades into the cake.

Happy Valentine’s Day!