Food fact: Beets – Last growing season Chewonki farmers harvested 416 lbs of beets. We store the beets in our temperature controlled root cellar where they will keep until the end of February. Beets have the highest sugar content of any vegetable with 7.96 grams of sugar per 100 grams. This makes them perfect for things like pickling, think sweet and sour, or as an accompaniment to something rich like a beef stew. Not everyone cares for their earthly sweet taste so we were excited to find a chocolate beet cake recipe which turns out to be a favorite of our current MCS students. Although we served shortbread hearts on Valentines Day this month, I thought I’d share the chocolate beet cake recipe so our MCS students will have the option to make this cake at home for family and friends. Beets in a chocolate cake means less cane sugar in the recipe which is something we strive for.
Chocolate Beet Cake
Prep time: 1 hour
Bake time: 25 minutes
Servings 15-20
Ingredients:
- 4 cups beets, cooked, peeled, grated (boil whole beets until they are tender. When you remove them from the pot the skins should slip off very easily.)
- 1 cup unsalted butter, melted
- 1 cup oil (sunflower or canola)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup maple syrup or honey
- 5 eggs
- 2 t vanilla extract
- 4 cups cake flour
- 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
- 4 t baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- Confectioners sugar for dusting
Directions:
- ~Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 13 x 9 inch cake pan very well with vegetable spray and dust them lightly with cocoa powder.
- ~In a large bowl, whisk together butter, oil, sugars and maple syrup or honey.then add eggs and vanilla to combine.
- ~In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients.
- ~Slowly add dry ingredients to wet. Stir gently. Then fold in the grated beets.
- ~Pour your batter into the prepared pan. Any extra batter can be used for cupcakes.
- ~Cook for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
- ~Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes then run a knife around the edge and invert the cake onto a cooling rack.
- We have been dusting the cake with powdered sugar but you could amp it up with frosting or cocoa whipped cream. Enjoy!
