Chocolate Beet Cake

There are a lot of great things about having a CSA share. When you sign up for a weekly share you're supporting local farmers and sustainable farming; you get quality produce at a cheaper price than you could find in a grocery store; and each week you get to bring home delicious foods like seedy whole wheat breads, raw cheese, and sweet corn, that might not have found their way into your kitchen otherwise. For all the wonderful things that come with it, the one drawback of a CSA share is that you also can get stuck with produce that you really don't want. And then you have to find ways to use up all of the fresh fennel, or the eggplant, or the stalks of edamame that you signed up for.

For us, the greatest challenge has been finding ways to use the steady supply of red beets we've received this summer.

As a kid I had the shock of mistaking roasted beets for slices of my beloved canned cranberry sauce at a Thanksgiving dinner - that night some part of my subconscious was forever scarred by that alien root. But when they started popping up in our vegetable drawer this summer the trauma had faded from memory and I really had no aversion to trying them again. I topped a pizza with caramelized onions, walnuts, chèvre and small wedges of the roasted beet; we quickly decided that none of us liked the beets and had to pick every one of them off just to salvage our dinner. 

As beets continued to come in each week it became evident that the only way to swallow a beet was in very small portions smothered by other, better flavors. I enjoyed the same pizza with a sprinkling of grated beet and found that golden beets are nicely camoflauged inside of a muffin. So I hatched a plan to take down this weeks store in a chocolate (red beet) cake!

While it might not be ready to stand side-by-side with a red velvet, this cake did become a beautiful shade of maroon as it baked in the oven. And the first bites confirmed that even a rugged root vegetable can be tamed into a decadent cake --with a helping heap of chocolate. Even though taste of beets still makes me gag a little bit, I enjoyed their subtle presence, which gave the cake a more complex and intriguing flavor. What more could I expect? 


Chocolate Beet Cake

from Melissa Breyer

4 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs, room temperature

1 3/4 cups sucanat (or raw cane sugar)

2 cups cooked pureed beets (3 medium beets or 2 1/2 large beets)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 375F. Butter and flour a 10-inch cake pan.

In a glass bowl set over a pan of simmering water stir the chopped chocolate and 1/4 cup of the oil. Stirring continuously, heat until only a few small unmelted chocolate pieces remain; remove from heat and stir until the the chocolate is melted and the mixture is well combined.

In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and the sugar with an electric mixer. Slowly beat in the remaining 3/4 cup oil, chocolate mixture, beets, and vanilla.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the chocolate and beet mixture, just until combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake for 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let cool for several minutes before removing from pan.