Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Chocolate Orange Ginger Drizzle

At this moment, my friends are out dancing. I came home to write about chocolate cake. Before you raise an eyebrow, you should know that this isn't just any chocolate cake, but a chocolate cake made with beets. I know what you're thinking: 'beets in a cake? gross'; but it's actually totally delicious, and while scraping the crumbs from the pan with the tip of my finger as I walked home, I was composing poetry in my head about the earthy, mild sweetness of the beets melding with the bitter sweetness of chocolate, the moistness of the crumb (due to the beets), and the way the flavours of candied orange peel and sweet ginger spiked up the whole thing as the perfect ending to a perfect bite. So why would I dance to '90's music when I could tell you about chocolate beetroot cake?



I love baking, and I love finding ways to bake healthfully. Part of this is doing it from scratch, and using fresh, organic, unprocessed, local ingredients. I love mixing in mashed/grated vegetables, or sometimes fruit, into my breads and cakes, too. "More vegetables" is a good general motto when it comes to my food, and baking is no exception.

One obvious example is banana bread, or carrot cake. But there are also apple cakes, pumpkin breads, zucchini bread (the English call this 'courgette cake' and think it's very strange indeed), sweet potato or pumpkin pie. When I heard of a recipe for chocolate cake with pureed beets, I was intrigued...partly because I knew I could get a good reaction from it, especially from Colm.



We grew beets in our garden this year because their green leaves are tasty in salads, steamed and tossed with dressing or fried with garlic and butter and really nutritious. Now we have an entire drawer full of the red roots. Roasted beet gets old; I prefer chocolate cake.

This recipe was passed around last year to the members of the CSA that we belong to. I've seen it in The Sunday Times and on Nigella Lawson's site. I've tweaked it a bit to make sure it contains healthy fats (coconut oil or ghee). It has a lovely, deep purple tint as you might expect, and is very nice if you sprinkle some shredded coconut on top after you drizzle on the melted chocolate. I've also mixed in a handful of chocolate chips, flaked almonds, chopped walnuts...you could improvise forever! So have fun with your purple chocolate cake. Just don't tell people what's in it until they're happily munching.

Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Chocolate Orange Ginger Drizzle
Adapted from Jill Dupliex's recipe in the Times Online

Notes: It's important to measure your beetroot precisely, otherwise the cake can taste too 'beety', so this is a good excuse to invest in a kitchen scale (which will be otherwise extremely useful, too!). I have also Americanized many of the amounts, putting them in cups instead of grams, for simplicity.

scant 1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 cup gluten-free self-raising flour or mix of this and whole wheat flour (I used 1/2 and 1/2 of each)
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup unrefined cane sugar
250g cooked beetroot
3 large eggs
2/3 cup ghee (clarified butter) or coconut oil, melted
1 tsp good vanilla extract
80g orange chocolate ginger (Divine chocolate is making this flavour now - it's very hard to stop eating by itself, so melting it and putting it on a cake helps). If you can't find this flavour of chocolate, then melt 80 grams of 70% dark chocolate with 2 tablespoons each of minced candied orange peel and minced candied ginger.

Heat the oven to 180C (160C in a fan oven) and oil an 8 inch round or spring-form cake tin. Sift the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder into a bowl. Mix in the sugar, and set these dry ingredients aside.

Purée the beetroot in a food processor. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the side between each addition. Add the vanilla and oil, and whiz until it is smooth. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the beetroot mixture and mix it all lightly. Pour into the prepared cake tin. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean (peek at it around 30 minutes - if it's browning, cover it with foil). Don't worry if it doesn't rise much. When it's done, let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Remove if you like before icing.

While it's cooling, melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in a bowl set into a pot of boiling water, over the steam, until smooth. Whisk in the minced orange peel and candied ginger if using. Drizzle this over the cake in streaks and swirls. It will set and harden after a half hour or so, but you can eat it before that. I'm sure this cake is delicious with vanilla ice cream.