Last year I saw a whole host of beetroot flavoured cake and brownie recipes appear, but never got round to trying any myself. This year, when I was given some beetroot, I decided that I definitely needed to try and make a chocolate beetroot cake. I am so glad I did – it was the most amazing, moist (and not too sweet) cake, with a deep red colour and certainly didn’t last long in our house!

chocolate beetroot cake

Typically, I rushed into making this cake without checking I had everything I needed! I had very little cocoa powder or chocolate and ended up making an icing out of drinking chocolate powder – but it all worked out fine.

Ingredients

250g beetroot, cooked and peeled

3 eggs

100g caster sugar

100g dark soft brown sugar

125ml sunflower oil

100g plain chocolate

25g cocoa powder

150g self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C and line a 2lb loaf tin.

2. Blitz the beetroot in the food processor until it is very finely chopped.

3. Whisk together the eggs and two types of sugar until they are well combined.

4. Melt the chocolate then add it to the egg and sugar mix along with the oil. Whisk until everything is mixed together.

5. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and whisk this in too.

6. Stir in the blitzed beetroot then pour the mixture into the prepared tin.

7. Bake in the centre of the oven for 50 mins – 1 hour. If the top starts to brown too much you can cover it loosely with foil. Test to see if the cake is ready by inserting a skewer – if it comes out clean then the cake is ready.

8. When it is cooked, remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

9. When the cake is cool you can ice it (my icing was a mish mash and I can’t remember exactly what I used!) or leave it uniced.

chocolate beetroot loaf