During my meatless month experiment in January, I found lots of great recipes in one of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks(I actually have a lot of them), The Seattle P-Patch Garden's cookbook; I didn't, of course, have time to make them all during the Month of January, but I'm still working on some of the most appealing recipes, even now going into March.
One of the most intriguing recipes was for a beet and chocolate cake. I know that veggies and chocolate go together perfectly and I have know this for many years, but I still had never managed to make a beet and chocolate cake until today. It's really a brilliant idea and I love the Beet and Chocolate cake recipe in the Seattle P-Patch Garden's Cookbook.
I made a third batch and put the cake into adorable heart covered muffin cases instead of making a standard size cake(not that it would have made that large a cake from a third batch). This way of baking them makes the cakes cuter, therefore more delicious, but also means that I can freeze the little cakes and thaw them out more easily than if they were in a giant pan. If I can easily freeze the little cakies, I won't feel obligated to stuff myself with delicious chocolate cakes to keep them from going to waste(who says I won't do that anyway =)).
post posting note: After posting the photos and story about these cakes I realized that this book isn't for sale in bookstores anymore and is hardly available from amazon, so I think I'll include the recipe.
1 1/2 C cooked, peeled and pureed beets
3 oz chocolate
3 eggs
1 1/2 C sugar
1 C oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 C flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 350 F
Melt chocolate, remove from heat to cool slightly. In a large bowl beat eggs lightly, add sugar, oil, vanilla, chocolate and beets, stirring well after each addition. In separate bowl sift together dry ingredients then add to chocolate mixture and beat until just blended. pour into greased 9x13 inch cake pan and bake for 35 min. Top with frosting, strawberries, ice cream, whipped cream, or any other desired topping.
I, of course, did not follow the recipe. I never end up following recipes the first time. I made a third batch and because I was out of canola oil, I used melted butter instead of the oil. I also baked the cakes as cupcakes for 20 minutes.
5 comments:
Yep, these are so cute they must be delicious! Do they carry any red hue? Or does the darkness of the chocolate override any red?
I have seen some red velvet recipes that call for beets rather than red dye to color the cake.
Julie
Hi Julie! thanks for the comment and question =) i will admit that i gobbled my cupcake so quickly that I hardly had time to look but it seemed pretty chocolatey and not really red at all. maybe because beets are such a dark red? I do get the faintest taste of sweetness from the beets. I bet cream cheese frosting would be delicious on these, and then they could be secret red velvet cupcakes =)
By the way, I made a third of a batch instead of this being the third batch I've made. It's confusing! =) sorry!!
Man, that looks delicious Lynnea!
Hi Kirk! =) you know, they really are good, if a little more vegetal than most people would be used to but golly are they moist! i took a cake out of the freezer the other day and it was still as moist as if it hadn't been frozen.
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