mondomulia

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. Gin and Crumpets' recipe for Chocolate Beetroot Cake with frosting might just be the  perfect one!

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 bought my beetroots from Perry Court Farm at Brockley Market.