Chocolate beetroot cakes

chocolate beetroot cakes

I’ve been searching for the perfect chocolate cake recipe forever, so it seems anyway, and I may just have found it at last. Beetroot seems to be the ingredient of the moment and I think I first heard of it being used in chocolate cake in a recipe in The Great British Bake Off last year. I didn’t fancy the idea much but I felt the same about carrot cake when it first became popular in Britain.

Then Nigel Slater did a beetroot cake which looked good but unfortunately it includes dried fruit and of course Jack hates sultanas, raisins, anything like that – he calls them ‘blisters’. I toyed with the idea of substituting chopped dates as he doesn’t mind those, but then I found this recipe on the BBC Food website and these cakes are just about perfect. They feel quite heavy but they aren’t heavy in the stomach, the weight is all due to the lovely moist texture of the sponge.

I didn’t have corn oil so I used sunflower oil. Cooked beetroot can be bought in vacuum packs at the veggie section of all supermarkets.

Ingredients

75g/2½oz cocoa powder or powdered drinking chocolate

180g/6½oz plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

250g/8½oz caster sugar

250g/8½oz cooked beetroot

3 large eggs

200ml/7fl oz corn oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

icing sugar for dusting

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 180C/355F/Gas 4. Arrange paper muffin cases in a 12-mould muffin tin.

Sift the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder into a bowl. Mix in the sugar, and set aside.

Purée the beetroot in a food processor. Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the vanilla and oil and blend until smooth.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the beetroot mixture and lightly mix. Pour into the muffin cases.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is firm when pressed with a finger.

Cool on a wire rack and dust with icing sugar to serve.

I used a non stick muffin tin for mine but if you only have fairy cake cases that will be fine, it just means you’ll get more of them as they’re smaller. In the future I think I’ll split the muffins and fill them with cherry jam and cream, and maybe even have a cherry on top!