For the February 15th HBinFive Bread Braid, we made several breads to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day: Chocolate Espresso Bread, Chocolate Tangerine Bars and Red Beet Buns.
I decided to get creative with the Chocolate Espresso Bread and bake it in a flower pot. The result was a dark brown bread that looks like dirt. I’m okay with that! It adds to the effect! The bread cracked a little bit at the top which I also think adds to the effect.
Here is the Chocolate Flower Pot Bread all dressed up for Valentine’s Day! I thought it looked more festive to keep it in the pot for the photo.
Would you like to learn how to make flower pot bread?
View my May 2009 post on Flower Pot Bread. It includes the recipe and instructions for making some delicious Flower Pot Bread.
Next …
We made Chocolate Tangerine Bars using the Chocolate Espresso Bread dough, along with a few additions – bittersweet chocolate, tangerine zest and dried cranberries. I liked the flavor of the bars. The dried cranberries and tangerine zest really provide a burst of flavor, but the bars were a little bit dry.
My taste tester thinks these bars would taste good made into bread pudding, but I decided they would taste really good crumbled over some vanilla ice cream.
My son got a great score on his SAT so we bought some ice cream the other night to celebrate. We crumbled one of the chocolate tangerine bars over the top and added some cherries. It was delicious, but I forgot to take a picture.
Wow! This has become a high calorie post. We went from chocolate bread to ice cream topped with chocolate bread. The good thing is there are no calories in these photos so you’re safe. The other good thing is that I only ate a couple of bites of the ice cream so I’m safe too. My son runs track so he can afford the calories.
Moving right along…
The final bread for this bread braid is Red Beet Buns. I wasn’t going to make them because they just didn’t sound good, but I changed my mind after reading some of the other posts. After all, what’s the point of participating in a bread-baking group if you don’t try new and different things, right? I definitely wouldn’t have chosen this on my own volition, but I’m glad I made them. They have a beautiful color!
My youngest son and I ate them as dinner rolls with homemade vegetable soup. We didn’t have high hopes for them, but we were pleasantly surprised. We had the buns warm with butter and they were actually pretty good. My son even said so. I could taste the onion flavor and my son said they tasted a little bit sweet.
I shared a bun with my taste tester (aka BF) and he loved them. He took some to share with his family. I always have so much bread around, I’m only to happy to share with willing taste testers. ;)
That’s about it for the Feb 15th Bread Braid! Thanks for joining us in the bread-baking blog. Look for more breads from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes Baking Group.
About the HBinFive Baking Group
The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book. For more information on the new HBinFive baking group, check out Michelle's blog.
Happy Baking!
Cathy
Here are some additional bread-making resources:
You might enjoy some of the other breads that have been featured in the bread making blog.
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