chocolate and beetroot cake

The first time I saw a slice of chocolate and beetroot cake it was displayed behind plexi-glass on the counter at Loafer, looking moist and shapely and deeply cocoa-coloured. I might even go so far as to use the word 'quivering' to describe it - it's a very sexy cake, and so very moist and spongey that you can almost detect movement in it the way you could with a pudding or jelly. And it's so packed with amazing that you envision it sort of jittering around on the plate until you break into it for the first bite, causing all of that energy to explode.

When we talk about beetroot there is always the preoccupation with the colour - the depth of it, the way it stains your fingers, your chopping board, your tongue. When you combine that with cocoa, well...you need to see it, really, and I'll need to take some photos through the process. There's also something, for me, about root vegetables that is really affirming, hardy, familiar, solid. The stuff reaches down into the ground to become what it is - there of course is something to be read in that - isn't there?

So when I saw that row of generous slices of chocolate beetroot cake, it went on my mental list of baking ambitions and showed up on the table a few weeks later. I served it to a couple of special friends, still warm, and the room was mostly quiet whilst it was consumed. It was a small event on a Sunday evening and everyone felt full of it. It is velvet and perfect. Vegetables making moisture in baked goods is the way forward.

The recipe, with credit given where credit is due:

chocolate and beetroot cake

the cake:

Roast 2 medium beetroots in foil @ 180C for 90 mins. Leave them to cool. Then mash them however you are able - puree is best, so food processor, blender, or knife/fork/immersion blender combination.

Cream 3 eggs and 1 cup of sugar in with the beetroot puree. Add 1 tsp vanilla (or the insides of a vanilla bean if you're so slowmantically inclined) and 3/4 cup veggie oil (or other preferred oil).

Sift these together:
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup cocoa
and then combine with the wet ingredients.

Pour the batter into a lined cake tin, however you like them to be shaped, and bake for 40 minutes. Check for doneness, the size and shape of the pan will vary baking time. Let it cool for a little while and turn it out onto a plate.

the icing:

I didn't use this exactly. I wanted it to have cream in it so I whipped some cream and added some icing sugar to it, and a melted Lindt bar (100 grams of 70% dark). I may or may not have used a bit of vanilla, and I just add sugar a few tablespoonfuls at a time until I'm happy with the sweetness - I want the flavour of the chocolate to be the main feature, only a hint of sweetness. The beetroot provides so much sweet, and it is quite natural-tasting, mellow and sort of like real cane, it actually tastes a bit like a plant. So yeah, you can do what I did or figure out your own icing. This one, though, was amazing. I spread it on when the cake was still warm so it got a bit melty but in the perfect way - the first slices were definitely the best ones, and it's a whole new (still indulgent) experience the next day.

This is what it looks like.