February 15th HBin5 Bread Braid Part I

February 15th Bread Braid with HBin5

Assignment: 

1/2 recipe Red Beet Buns, Pgs 180-181

½ recipe Chocolate Espresso WW Bread, 302-303

Chocolate Tangerine Bars, pgs 304-305

We can make substitutions, but share what and how we substituted with the group in our blogs.

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Chocolate Espresso WW Bread

Substitutions:

White whole wheat for whole wheat

Added 4 ½ oz cocoa and ¼ c butter in place of 6 oz bittersweet chocolate

Added 2 handfuls cinnamon chips and 1 tbsp cinnamon

Had to add an extra cup of water because the dough was too stiff, 

probably because of the extra cocoa

This is a bread I will definitely make again!  I love the rich flavor!  BUT, as is usual I had to put my own twist on it.  

While we were in Mexico we had a lot of chocolate!  But down there they love to put cinnamon with their chocolate.  So it seemed natural to me to include cinnamon in this recipe. 

Also, I didn’t want to do just bread, I wanted some sort of “pastry”.  I used my pasta bike to cut long ribbons of dough which I then twisted and coiled around to form a “round” which I’ve named “meadow buns!”  See if you get the joke!   They are very delicious!  

I used Apima Mexican honey in this recipe.

Pasta bike worked great in cutting out the strips of dough.

I also baked some Chocolate Espresso Cinnamnon Straws 

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I still had some extra dough, since I had made a full recipe, and decided to try a baked apple wrapped in this dough.  I used my apple slicer (which also cores the apple), and while holding the apple together on the dough, I shoveled in more sugar and cinnamon.  Then I quickly wrapped the bread dough around it.  

I put the dough wrapped apple in one of my large muffin molds and baked it at the temp called for.

When I served this I poured a bit of my homemade Chocolate Raspberry Port over it.

But I felt that the dough had dried out a bit, so decided to take the rest and make it into Apple Chocolate Espresso Bread Pudding!

I topped the bread pudding with a bit of cream.  Now that's a dessert!  

Chocolate Tangerine Bars  

Substitutions:

Zest from one orange, I didn’t have any tangerines

Cinnamon chips for chocolate

Dried cherries for cranberries

This is another one that I love with the cinnamon chips and extra cinnamon!  I wouldn’t waste cherries on it again however.  The next time I will just put in the dried cranraisins as they are cheaper.  The taste of the chocolate pretty much overwhelmed the cherries. 

I read a trick about zesting citrus fruit…put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes if the fruit is soft.  The skin freezes up and makes it much easier to zest.  Don’t remember where I read that, but it works!

Red Beet Buns

Substitutions:

1 c WWW (white whole whe