Candied Beet Cubes

A few weeks ago we spent a lovely Saturday in Lenox, Massachusetts.  When we were driving home we were, as usual, talking about recipe ideas.  We wanted to make something with our gorgeous beets which we had purchased the day before at our local vegetable shop.  Having used beets for savory dishes numerous times, we wanted to venture out and try a dessert.  We agreed upon a beet parfait (see previous post…”You Can’t Stop the Beet“) but knew we needed (or wanted) accompaniments to dress it up.  Personally, we both enjoy texture as part of our food experience, so with the creaminess of the parfait we wanted a little crunch.  We also wanted to make the beet the star of this blog entry so we wanted to showcase it in as many ways as possible within one dessert.  We decided upon candied beets.  We were not sure the shape they would take on, but in the end we went with cubes.

We started by roasting the beets.  These would be used for three parts of this dessert.

After the beets were roasted they were peeled.  We like to do this wearing rubber gloves so the coloring of the beet does not stay on our hands.

The beet was then sliced.

And then cubed.

We set aside our beet cubes and in a small saucepan made a simple syrup.

 The simple syrup was heated over a low flame.  Once the sugar was dissolved, we added the cubed beets and  continued to cook over low flame for about 5 minutes.

When the beets had cooked for five minutes we transferred them to a parchment lined baking sheet where we baked them in a very low (200) oven for about 45 minutes.

When the beets came out of the oven we used them as a crunchy garnish for our beet root parfait.  They were quite yummy and unusual and created a lovely texture for our dessert.