More beetroot - but now, with chocolate!

Hello beetroot lovers, I know that you exist because you have been shyly telling me how much you dig the stuff ever since my beetroot carpaccio recipe popped up here. It's exactly like that situation where you mention one day that you were attacked by a squirrel when young and then suddenly everyone's like, "Oh yeah, I was attacked by a squirrel too". Exactly like that.

So, I was asked to make a cake with beetroot in it by my co-star Libby, who has been on a de-tox. I think that detoxing is something that young people do, or dilettantes, or if you hit the sauce a bit much and end up rolling down a series of hills (or possibly sand dunes) at night thinking that you are a dachshund and then lay in a gutter and wake the next morning covered in vomit and some sort of red paint. That's just a guess though.

Beetroot and chocolate have a high regard for each other. They like to be mixed and they are fond of being baked into a union that only a hungry mouth can free them from. I might be anthropomorphising, but I don't think so.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your ovens (at 180c).

Recipe (Pronounced "Re- chi -pee" in the Italian way) gotten from allrecipes.com.au

• 50g cocoa
• 230g self-raising flour
• 200g caster sugar
• 150g dark chocolate broken into small, sad pieces.
• 125g unsalted butter
• 250g cooked beetroot, grated (oh ho ho, easier said then done)
• 3 large eggs

Folks, I changed things around a bit from how I originally found them. They used 100g drinking chocolate - which is sweet and I don't keep that stuff around so I decided to make it 50g of cocoa and increase the chocolate from 100 to 150 grams. I like chocolate more and cocoa less. Seemed to work out ok in the end.

Necessary

Also, necessary

Before you do anything else make sure that you have rubber gloves. 








I wrapped up two smallish beetroots in foil and put them in the oven for about 45 minutes (at 180). This process was unscientific in that I just kept poking them with a skewer. This has the dual effect of enraging them and also checking if they are cooked. Once the skewer slides through easily (not as easily as cooked potato, but as easily as cheese, let's say. Chedder, for all you pedants) get them out of the oven and let them cool a bit. They are going to be very hot, root veges like to hold their heat - it's a family thing. Rub the skin off under running water and then pop them somewhere safe and washable and containable. Remember this is volatile material you are dealing with. At this precise moment in the cake making cycle Gabriel appeared from his nap. It was me, two skinless beetroots and a four year old. The possibilities were endless.

Gabe had a look at them and then noticed the chocolate, so crisis averted. I grated the beetroot, this was all made possible inside a bowl with high sides. And of course the gloves stayed on. The next step is one that I always cheat on - this is where you have to melt chocolate and butter together in a bowl suspended over boiling water. I ALWAYS microwave it. But not today. Today I decided to go ahead with the recipe as written - I did that because I have a new saucepan which allows a bowl to sit in it without touching the bottom - this was always my issue in the past. I would look at all my bowls and saucepans and couldn't envision how it would work without a block and tackle and 16 metres of suspension wire. Today I did it.

Saucepany minx

Not an encouraging sight, I grant you.

  
Here's the saucepan and the bowl. See how that works. Rather nicely if I do say so myself. Here's the melted chocolate mixture on top of the beetroot. Looks like beef mince and chocolate. 







So yeah mix the beetroot and the chocolate together. Let them sit a bit and cool. In the meantime sift the flour and the cocoa and then add the sugar. This is your classic wet and dry ingredients mix up. Add the eggs to the chocolate and beetroot and mix well. Amusingly they indicate in the recipe that you should "eventually" add the beetroot mix to the dry mix, I really have no idea how long that is. I just did it as soon as the chocolate mix was all mixedy. 

There's a red tinge - no doubt

Gabe mixes it up.

Gabe did the mixing on the two sets of  ingredients coming together - he is definitely more forthright regarding his role in the baking process. I think that he is particularly interested in mixing because he knows that this is the step right before the licking of the spoon and bowl. 

Pop the mix into a lined pan (it's meant to be 18cm but I am a rule breaker and used a 20cm pan - made no difference. No difference at all). Cook it for 50 mins at 180. It took almost exactly 50 mins. But it came out and it was so lovely. Like an ugly teenager who makes a beautiful debutante.  

Perfect. Really. I mean it. Perfect. 

I made a ganache (that's just cream and chocolate melted together) and slapped that on and then Gabe decorated it. He did a good job. He was heavily supervised.

"Oh Darling, you look lovely"

Libby ate the cake and was very appreciative and she took a traveller which she gave to her partner and he liked it too. It was really lovely and moist and a little bit vegetal, but that was kind of lovely. 

And now, to finish, a possessed banana.