Ypsi Cooks

I get it: Valentine’s Day comes with a lot of strings attached for a lot of people. Fortunately, not for me. My parents didn’t put much stock in Valentine’s Day. To a fault. One year I, the budding romantic, said, “Dad, what are you getting mom for Valentine’s Day?”
“Nothing.We don’t really do Valentine’s.”
My response? “Well mom’s getting you something…” An hour later I had the same conversation with my mom, names reversed. Such a devious plotter I was, and at such a young age.

For all of my parent’s lack of cheesy Valentine’s doting on each other (made up for throughout the year, I promise), my mother certainly made up for it with us kiddos. Valentine’s always fell close to the annual Presidents’ Day Weekend ski trip, and our sack lunches on the mountain always contained chocolate hearts or chocolate lips, or some other (chocolate) Valentine’s Day goodie. One year my mom bought us cute little Valentine’s Day mugs and we used them (for many years) in the motel for eating oatmeal in the morning and sipping hot chocolate in the afternoon. To this day she still sends Valentine’s cards (especially to the grandkids) and offers little special treats. (It must be noted that my mother-in-law sends along some great treats too.)

All of this is to say that even though I don’t go in for Hallmark, roses, expensive dinners and consumerism induced guilt, I still LOVE Valentine’s Day. I am enamored with creating decorations and cards and and creating red and/or pink and/or heart shaped treats. Especially if I can find a way to make them at least a little healthy. So the pink-ness of “Red Beet Buns from Healthy Bread in 5 was perfect match.
I don’t think I would have thought to make these if it hadn’t been an “assignment” from Michelle over at BigBlackDog. The dough has spelt flour, shredded beets and minced onion in addition to the usual. I made a half batch, mostly because I only had 2 beets left from this summer’s garden. In fact, I added a little shredded carrot to make up the 1 1/2 cups needed. I was excited about the onion, so I included 1 whole small onion (racquet ball size) in the half batch. Also, I didn’t peel the beets, I only scrubbed them: once shredded who would know the difference.
Other’s had mentioned the dough being a little wet, so I wasn’t concerned when I dumped in an extra ounce of flour. I shredded the beet, onion and carrot in the food processor, so I thought I’d mix the dough in there too. It was a lot more hassle than mixing by hand, but I think it’s part of what imparted the slightly more purple than pepto bismol color to the dough.

I’ve been wanting to make these egg baskets since Zoe of HBin5 posted them over a year ago. There’s no time like the present. Eventually.

I rolled out a pound of dough, cut it inot six squares and put it into every other cup of a sprayed muffin tin. Tom put in a little cheese and an egg into each “basket.”

We baked them at 375* for about 20 min. I think a lower temperature with a longer bake time might provide an absolutely unctuous egg, but with a little salt and pepper, these were pretty great. We had them for dinner with some broccoli. The onion flavor paired beautifully with the egg, and the rise, crust and crumb were lovely. It was hard for me to get a good photo, so I’m including one with a cute little model to make up for it.

Eli thought our Valentine’s Day egg baskets were “cool.” He insisted “I really the crust,” until he found out there were beets in it… I’m looking forward to the summer when beets are plentiful again. I suspect these will be a favorite of our daughter who has taken a liking to pink.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 8:47 am and is filed under HBin5, Things we Made. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.