Ever since my children started at Kindergarten I have been made aware of the idea of baking Chocolate Cake with Beetroot. It has been on my to do list for ages so today I thought was the day to give it a try!

There are lots of schools of thought as to why you add Beetroot to a cake, some for the health benefits of all the goodness that are in beetroot and for others it is the divine moistness that it provides the cake. Either way it sounded like a grand idea to try, beetroot itself is quite sweet so it adds to the sweetness too. Of course if you smother it in lashings of Chocolate Buttercream and Freeze Dried Raspberries as I have done here you are gauranteed a winner!

My daughters both adore beetroot, fresh or straight from the can so it is always something we have in the house.  It seems everyone wants to make a slightly different, slightly more unusual chocolate cake from the one before. I often wonder how many variations you can have, in fact on my Blog alone currently I have 4 completely different (now 5) chocolate cakes and all divine in their own way.

One of the great things about chocolate cake recipes is almost all of them can be made into cupcakes. This recipe makes a lovely big cake so you can always make a smaller cake then pop the rest of the batter into cupcake cases to have on hand in the freezer.

Beetroot is a funny old vegetable lets be honest. The colour is absolutely amazing, it stains everything it touches, it tastes super earthy and is divine in both savoury and sweet dishes, and very few people know how to prepare it properly. In fact I only recently learned the proper way to boil them to prepare them for a delicious combination of sliced beetroot with brown sugar and vinegar – yum! You will find it is a vegetable that people either love or hate. In our family that is especially true, you will want to use fresh cooked beetroot here for best results.

A quick google search reveals over 12,000,000 results for Beetroot recipes so I really feel that we are under utilising this vegetable in our house. Everything from dips to drinks, icing, salads, pizza to sorbets. I may have to lift my game!

So onto the recipe, I used a food processor to blitz up my beetroot before I added it to the recipe (because I didn’t want to grate it!) but you can absolutely grate or mash them if you prefer!

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Beetroot Infused Chocolate Cake

Yield: 20

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour 50 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes

This recipe has been adapted from the Leaderbrand Beetroot Chocolate Cake Recipe.

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Ingredients

• 2 Cups White Sugar
• 1 1/2 Cups Vegetable Oil (I used Canola)
• 4 Eggs, Large
• 2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 2 Cups Plain White Fflour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 Cup Cocoa Powder
• 3/4 Cup Dark Chocolate Chips
• 2 Cups (250 to 300 grams) Cooked Beetroot, I used Leaderbrand Baby Beets!(Finely chopped, mashed or blitzed)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180ºC on Bake

Grease the bottom and sides 23cm spring-form cake tin and line base with paper.

Mash, grate or blitz the beetroot and set aside.

In a large bowl or food mixer add the sugar, oil and vanilla essence and whisk together well.

Add the eggs one at a time and whisk well between each addition.

In another large bowl add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder and stir to combine.

Add the dry ingredients to the first bowl and combine well.

Add the Chocolate Chips, and beetroot and stir until just combined

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. It may take up to 1.5 hours, so do check consistently, the cake may appear cooked but check with a knife or skewer to make sure.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before icing.

Use a basic vanilla icing, ganache or a chocolate buttercream to serve.

This cake gets better as they days go by and will freeze well.

Did you make this recipe?

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So when it is baked it makes the most beautiful smelling chocolate cake, with the additional density and moisture the beetroot brings but without the beetroot flavour. Also gives a lovely rich colour to the finished product.

So there you have it, another chocolate recipe to add to your collection and to try. It is a firm dense cake so it will be great for decorating too

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Happy Baking!

Anna xox