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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Chocolate Beetroot Cupcakes

I've heard about putting beetroot in chocolate cake, but never quite understood how or why you would. A couple of days ago I made cupcakes which may just change the way I make chocolate cupcakes henceforth.

With limited internet access on this trip, I'm becoming quite intimate with the May Issue of Recipes+ which I bought before leaving home. This issue has a recipe for Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Fudge Frosting. The recipe calls for fresh, boiled beetroot. I'm in the Pilbara, and the supermarkets I find myself relying on up here are lucky to have two different types of fresh fruit, let alone fresh beetroot so I went for the canned variety. I also substituted white self-raising flour with wholemeal because using white flour in anything makes me squeamish these days. I really have become a health conscious hippy. If I wasn't saving my last little bit of wholemeal spelt four for another batch of Breakfast Muffins, I might have even used that. Other than those two amendments, I kept the ingredient list the same as the original. The method however, I completely made up. Without an electric mixer I had to ad lib, so here is my method.

450g tin whole baby beets, drained and grated
150g butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs at room temp (or at 35C as the case was)
1 3/4 cups wholemeal SR flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1/3 cup milk
100g dark chocolate, chopped

  1. Preheat oven to 180C (160C fan forced) and line a 12 hole muffin tray with paper cases, plus a 12 hole mini muffin tray (this mix makes a lot of cupcakes).
  2. Melt butter and chocolate in small saucepan.
  3. Combine sugar, flour and cocoa in a large bowl.
  4. Add milk, melted butter mixture and beetroot and mix as hard as your arm allows with a wooden spoon until combined. The batter will be fairly thick, something like a brownie batter.
  5. Spoon into paper cases and bake for 20-25 mins or until they spring back lightly when touched.
Fudge Icing
3 cups icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
100g butter
80g dark chocolate
1/3 cup milk

  1. Sift sugar and cocoa into a medium bowl.
  2. Put butter, chocolate and milk in a small saucepan and heat gently until melted and combined.
  3. Stir chocolate mixture into dry ingredients until smooth. I used a whisk to eliminate any clumping of my not-very-well-sifted icing sugar.
  4. Refrigerate for half an hour or so to set a little.
  5. Spread on cupcakes.
These cupcakes were so moist you could eat them without the frosting, but this frosting really is very tasty. They have a beautiful deep red/brown colour due to the beetroot and the wholemeal flour (and probably the lack of electric mixing) adds a texture that I really enjoyed. This recipe made so many that we shared some with the family camping next to us that night and they loved them too. Definitely a recipe I will make again.

3 comments:

  1. Yum I love chocolate beetroot cake but have never made it, thanks for sharing the recipe Pam!!

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    Replies
    1. They are so good Blair! And my "throw everything in and mix" method makes the process so much easier! :)

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  2. Thanks for sharing Pam! Something to tweak to make GF & DF for my little one :) They sound yum!

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