Chocolate Beetroot Cake

I’m just pulling up the last of the beetroot now and this makes a fantastic moist Chocolate Cake.  

 Text Only Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

Cake :
8oz (225g) Butter
8oz (225g) Golden caster sugar
1 tbsp Dark treacle
4 Eggs
6oz (170g) Self raising flour
2oz (60g) of Dark cocoa powder (Green and Blacks ).
Milk *

100g bar of 70% Dark chocolate
4oz of Beetroot cooked not pickled! About 2 small beets

*(I would normally recommend medium size eggs which should weigh 2oz each.  This isn’t always the case and if the mixture feels too stiff after adding the flour, add tbsp of milk at a time to achieve a soft dropping consistency.)

Icing:

8oz (225g) Icing sugar
1 oz (30g) Cocoa powder
2 oz (60g) Butter
2 tbsp Cream
2 tbsp Water

Chocolate shavings to decorate

Method:

Preheat oven to a moderate temperature 160c/140c Fan/325F/Gas Mark 3.

Grease sandwich cake tins. I like using my false bottom 7 inch ones (oo er…) and I add an extra bit of greaseproof paper at the bottom as well.

In a blender (I use a Magimix with a Sabatier blade) chop up the bar of chocolate as finely as possible, then add your beetroot and chop.  You should be left with a ‘spoonable’ puree. The less you want to see your beetroot pieces, the smoother the puree should be. Put to one side.

Cream the sugar and butter together, add the treacle and whisk in. Whisk in the eggs one at a time. Fold in half the flour and cocoa, and then fold in the beetroot and chocolate puree.  Finally fold in the rest of the flour and cocoa and add milk as required.

Divide into two cake sandwich tins. You can weigh each one to make sure you have the same weight of mixture in both, for two even bakes. Place in the centre of the oven. Check after 15-20 minutes. Cook until risen and a skewer comes cleanly out. Allow to cool and make icing. 

Simple butter cream – whisk butter, cream and icing sugar and cocoa powder together. Add tbsp of hot water at a time until smooth enough to spread in and over cake. Decorate with chocolate shavings or as desired. I've made this 5 times now and the results are very consistent even though the evidence disappears!



I was pleased with the icing as well and it made a change from the chocolate fudge cake recipes.  I could almost convince myself it was slightly healthy!



Next blog due: This evening I have made a Pear and Ginger Cake which did not go quite to plan. Tried to do something different and did not quite follow instructions on recipe.  It tastes really good but it's very ugly. Tomorrow I will have to create my "Outtakes Page"....