Who doesn’t love chocolate cake? When making cakes, and chocolate cakes in particular, the aim is always to keep it moist and decadent. There are umpteen ways to achieve this – sour cream, buttermilk, egg white meringues and what not. What about beetroot?

The following recipe was a happy accident of sorts. I didn’t set out to make chocolate beetroot cake and gather the ingredients. Rather, I had beetroot that were almost on the verge of going bad. I wanted to use them up somehow. My little Boy turns up his nose at every possible veggie concoction. What if I hid it in a dessert? I searched the mighty, all-knowing internet, and lo! It seems I was definitely not the first one to think so. Beetroot, like carrot, makes a decadent cake, it seems.

I found a perfect simple recipe from BBC Food. There were other recipes like this one from Nigel Slater which involved melting chocolate on a double boiler, separating eggs and forming a meringue. I decided to stick to the simpler version and it turned out delicious.

The original recipe is in weight measure. It is no doubt more accurate, but I had to convert it into volume measurement, since I don’t own a kitchen scale (yet). Here is a website that will help you in conversion of measures for baking ingredients. Anyhow, I used the following measurements and the cupcakes turned out wonderful!

You will need:

• Flour – 11/2 cups
• Cocoa powder – 2/3 cup
• Baking powder – 2 tsp
• Sugar – 1 cup
• Beetroot – 250 g (1/2 lb), fully cooked
• Eggs – 3 (large)
• Oil – 200 ml (0.4 pints)
• Vanilla extract – 1 tsp
• Powdered sugar – for dusting

How to: (* – Refer notes)

• Cook the beetroot.*
• Pre-heat the oven to 350 deg F. Grease your cupcake/muffin pan or arrange paper cupcake cups or use a 9-in cake pan.**
• Sift the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder into a bowl. Mix in the sugar. Set aside.
• Puree the cooked beetroot in a food processor/blender. Add the eggs, one at a time, and blend well. Then add the vanilla extract and oil. Blend until smooth and glossy.
• Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, add the beetroot mixture and lightly mix. The batter turns a glorious shade of red!

• Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the top is firm when pressed with a finger.
• Cool on a wire rack. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.
• This freezes extremely well too.

Notes: * You can boil the beetroot in water in a covered pot. Remember not to slice or prick the beetroot, because the color and nutrients will then leech into the water. Be patient. This may take a while. The beetroot are done when you can prick them with a fork easily. Remove them promptly from the hot water and rinse them under cold water. You should then be able to easily peel the skin off with your fingers.

Alternately, you can roast the beetroot in the oven.

** The above recipe yielded 12 cupcakes and a slightly flat 8-in cake. I think it might yield 15-18 cupcakes depending on your pan size.

Enjoy a sweet, almost healthy, fudgy cupcake.

Let me know if you try this! Have you tried veggies in desserts?

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