Chocolate and beetroot cake

*WARNING*

 This cake is easier to make if you own an electric hand mixer and food processor! 

I know what you are thinking...beetroot?! Really?! Well, yes. For a while now I have wanted to attempt baking a chocolate and beetroot cake and the other strange thing about this cake is that it is not made with flour. I do like beetroot but for those of you that don't I have to say that you can't taste the beetroot, the chocolate over powers the beetroot and the texture is similar to a carrot cake.

I scanned the internet and found a few recipes however, I noticed the majority included espresso but as I'm not a fan of espresso. I found one that missed out this ingredient, it was a Jamie Oliver recipe. A staff meeting was coming up so I thought it would be a good opportunity to try it out.

Ingredients:

Olive oil - try find a J.O recipe without this ingredient :) 

Plain flour for dusting

300g good- quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids) I found some on offer

250g raw beetroot

4 large eggs (free-range if you can)

150g golden caster sugar

120g ground almonds 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1 tablespoon of good-quality cocoa powder (not hot chocolate!)

Natural yogurt, to serve - (I didn't include this part)

Method:

I tried to measure out my ingredients however I came in to some difficulty with the beetroot and the fact that I had different size bowls for different ingredients. I would suggest having 2 large mixing bowls and a medium bowl ready, and if you don't have a food processor (like I didn't) I would suggest grating the beetroot first before doing anything else.

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 /350 F / gas 4

• Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 20cm springfrom tin with olive oil (I normally do this with butter but thought I'd give oil a go. It works just the same so I guess it depends what you have and what you prefer to do.)

• Cut out a circle of grease-proof paper. I used the base of the tin to cut round.

• Dust the sides of the tin with flour, then tap the tin to get rid of any excess. I have never done this before as my tins are non-stick.

• Break up 200g of the chocolate (save the rest for later) and add to a heat proof bowl.

Now I have talked about melting chocolate in the microwave in my previous post. In this post the chocolate is melted over a pan.

• Place your heat proof bowl on top of a small pan of simmering water on a medium heat. (Only put a small amount of water to cover the bottom of the pan twice over). Make sure the bottom of bowl isn't touching the water. Stir now and again.

When your chocolate is melted take the bowl off the pan, tune the heat off first and take the bowl off with a tea towel or over gloves.

As I said before if you don't own a food processor I would do this step before any other. 

• I used a Y-shaped peeler to peel the beetroot but I'm sure you can use any. I kept the tops on while peeling so I could hold on to something while doing this and I also wore rubber gloves as I didn't want red hands for weeks! 

• The recipe then says to quarter them and push through the coarse grater attachment on the food processor, then tip into a large mixing bowl.

If you are like me and don't own a food processor then use the coarse side of your cheese grater. (This part is the most labor intensive).  

• Separate the eggs, placing the whites into a large mixing bowl. I separate my eggs like this, passing it to one half of the shell to the other.

• Add the yolks tot he beetroot, look at those colours! 

• Stir the sugar, almonds, baking powder, cocoa powder and melted chocolate into the beetroot and mix together well. This is where I realised I planned my bowls wrong.

• Use an electric mixer to whisk the egg whites until you have stiff peaks.

• Take your spatula and fold a quarter of the egg whites into the beetroot mixture to loosen, once combined, fold int he rest but try not to over mix!!

Looks disgusting smells divine

• Place your mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for around 50 minuets. Mine took about 45 as I have a fan oven. You can check if your cake is ready by waiting until it has risen and piercing it with a skewer or tooth pick, if it comes out clean it's ready!

Once your cake is cool melt the remaining chocolate as above and drizzle over. I ended up pouring it all over then adding edible glitter :)

It states in the recipe to serve with nature yogurt. I didn't as the cake was for a staff meeting but I would recommend following this step. The cake tastes nice, it didn't turn out dry as I expected it too. I love dark chocolate but if you are not a fan the yogurt will take the slight bitter edge off. 

I had a positive response from the staff and I even got to bring some back home! It states that it serves 16 which I think is about right as you don't need a big slice. 

This recipe was fun to do as it had an unusual ingredient and no flour. One thing it has taught me is that I need to start saving for a food processor!

Why not give it a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx