Another Beautiful Cake - Chocolate Beetroot Cake

My cricket is coming home for her birthday dinner this evening and I made her a birthday cake! She will blow out a candle, open a gift, and cut into this lovely little cake that I made this morning. Pardon the purple and pink icing drizzle ... I just HAD to do it! It is SOOO reminding me of Sara's My Pretty Pony days; I swear she had little plastic ponies that were the exact shades of this icing drizzle! Come to think of it, I think she also had purple and pink sweat pants, t-shirts, barrettes, and socks! Maybe even sneakers! Yup! I'm positive ... thank God, her fashion sense has improved. Mine, however ...?

With beet juice in such a vibrant shade of purple, I just had to play with the colors! Yeah, I know pretty purple geraniums and mint are redundant, but Sara didn't see my other pretty cake of last week (another birthday cake!). It's all new to her! Happy Birthday, sweetie!

This is a cake that I found after being inspired by Dom over at Belleau Kitchen. He made a beetroot cake earlier this year and I was intrigued. I waited until our garden offered up a boatload of beets before scouting a recipe and going for it. Lucky Sara gets the decadence of this chocolate cake that is topped with semi-sweet morsels and a cream cheese frosting drizzle. No dietary wimps, here!

The batter has pureed cooked beets, vegetable oil, beet juice, eggs, and lots of chocolate that make for a very moist crumb. It's an amazing 'Cabernet' red from all that beet juice and the soupy beet mash, but bakes up to a warm chocolate brown! Amazing! To boot, the semisweet morsels, scattered over the batter before baking, create a gooey chocolate hit when you take a forkful. Of course, they're hidden under that drizzle, like little chocolate bombs.

The purple and pink drizzle is just adding another sweet hit. Quite yummy! So, here's the recipe ... from the About.com cooking website ... enjoy, if you have the motherlode of beets!

Chocolate Beetroot Cake

recipe by Peggy Trowbridge Fillippone

Ingredients:

1 ¾ c. flour

1 ½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
15 oz. cooked beets, purèed
½ c. beet juice, reserved from cooking liquid or from can juices, if using canned beets
1 ¼ c. sugar
1 scant c. vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
4 oz. baker’s unsweetened chocolate, melted over very warm water
1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Making the Cake:
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and line the bottom of a 13 x 9 inch sheet cake pan or two round spring form pans with waxed paper. Grease the top of the paper too.

2. Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl and set aside.

3. Place the beet purèe, sugar, vegetable oil, and beet juice together in a large bowl and beat to incorporate all the ingredients.

4. Add the vanilla and eggs, one at a time, beating well between each.

5. Add the flour to the batter and beat for two minutes.

6. Turn the melted chocolate into the batter and beat well.

7. Turn the batter into the pan(s) and sprinkle the semi-sweet chips evenly over the surface of the batter.

8. Bake for 25 – 35 minutes, until a cake tester comes clean.

9. Remove and cool for ten minutes on a rack.

10. Place another rack atop the cake and turn the cake over to remove the pan(s).

11. Gently peel off the waxed paper and reverse the cake back onto a pretty serving platter.

12. Continue to cool until serving time. Before serving, drizzle the cake with cream cheese frosting or sprinkle the cake with confectioner’s sugar or serve with the dollop of ice cream or whipped cream … your decision!

13. Cover the remaining cake tightly to maintain moisture.

Post dessert note ... I'm keeping this recipe... the cake is unbelieveably moist and the drizzle idea is good, as more icing would drown the flavors of the cake. Soft chocolate morsels give a nice chocolate 'bite' that pops out when you chew into a forkful. The cream cheese drizzle is light and airy too ... probably all the beating it took to get it to a loose enough stage to actually drizzle from the spatula onto the cake top ... wink, wink!