My obsession with beetroot continues! I first tried this vegetable one year ago: I was bored of the usual salad combinations and wanted to experiment with new ingredients. So I bought the cooked beetroot vacuum pack from Tesco and entered the world of beets!
Of course now I wouldn’t dare eating packaged beetroot and rather buy them fresh from a food market.
Isn’t it good to be obsessed with something that is also healthy? ;) Beetroots are a great source of antioxidants (all coloured fruits and vegetables are), as they contain betacyanin, which speeds up detoxification in your liver (this makes them good a hangover cure).
I have already written about my love for beets when I made the Beetroot Hummus. I have also been cooking Beetroot Risotto regularly and it’s now become one of my signature dishes! This week I made the jump from savoury to sweet and baked a Beetroot and Chocolate Cake.
Surprised at the idea of eating beets with chocolate? Beetroot has a higher sugar content than most vegetables (10%) and it’s also very low in calories.
I used a recipe from BBC Good Food, which is a reliable source of easy-to-make recipes. Unlike other recipes I found online, this doesn’t include butter and demands chocolate in a bar as well as the powder. As a result, the cake has a strong dark chocolate taste, however I do think that a bit of butter would improve the cake and make it soft and gooey. I think this cake would be perfect with a layer of buttercream frosting!
Ingredients
- 1 large fresh beetroot (about 200g)
- 200g plain flour
- 100g cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 250g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 200ml sunflower oil
- 100g dark chocolate
Preparation
Wash the beetroot gently, trim the stalks to about 2cm above the bulb, leave the root and skin on. Boil is for 60-80 minutes, then peel it and chop it roughly. Use a food processor to make a paste.
Pre-heat oven to 190 °C. Mix the beetroot cream with a pinch of salt, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract.When completely mixed, add the oil in a steady stream.
Chop or grate the dark chocolate into small flakes, add to the rest and mix well using an electric beater. Tip the mix into a brownie cake tin (though the original recipe suggest using a loaf tin). Cook for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out dry.
Leave the cake to cool on a rack. Serve in slices with the clotted cream ice-cream.
I love your photography, and your post makes me want to revisit using beets in baking. I tried to adapt an american red velvet cake using beets instead of food coloring once and it wasn’t to my liking, but I think I should maybe try again using someone else’s recipe before giving up on them!
Best, Jodi
These brownies look delicious and as always your photography is stunning. Can’t wait to try this recipe out for myself and see if I can get my brownies as deliciously gouey as yours. Is the cooking time fairly crucial for this?
Also, I thought I’d let you know that I’ve nominated you for a Liebster blog award for your utterly fantastic blog. You really deserve some recognition for how great it is
http://bighungrygnomes.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/my-first-blog-award/
Thank you for such a nice comment! I made this cake twice already, the first time I cooked it for 1h and it came out a bit burnt on the edges, so the second time I cooked it for 55′, but I suppose it really depends on your oven!
they look really spongy and moist in the pictures! Great presentation :)
Thanks Seline, they are really moist, even after a week!
It didn’t sound appealing at all in the beginning but the last picture has made me change my mind: I will definitely try the beetroot and chocolate cake!
looks very delicious