Simplicity is the star of this moist, unusual Beetroot and Chocolate Cake by Chef Sabyasachi Gorai, topped with caramelised walnuts to make your tea-time extra indulgent.
Make sure you cool the beetroot completely before pureeing.
The cake can be served as it is, or with whipped cream. Feeling adventurous? Add a chocolate ganache topping.
Chef Sabya cooking is of the playful variety -- he often slips the most unusual, fun but healthy ingredients into conventional recipes -- like coconut cream into pasta, pumpkins into muffins or avocados into mousse.
Beetroot Chocolate Cake
Servings: 1
Ingredients
- 100 gm beetroot, peeled, boiled
- 125 gm walnuts, chopped
- 150 gm butter or margarine (margarine is a subtitute for butter, it's made from vegetable/animal fats or oil
- 175 gm sugar
- 8 gm vanilla sugar, available in gourmet grocery stores or can be purchased online, can be substituted with approximately ½ tsp vanilla essence and 1 tsp sugar)
- 3 medium-sized eggs
- 150 gm maida or all-purpose flour (substitute with whole wheat flour, but the cake may turn out slightly crumbly) + extra for dusting the loaf pan
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 4 tbsp cocoa powder + extra for dusting
- Pinch salt
- Baking paper
- 11 x 25 cm loaf pan
- Sweetened whipped cream, to serve, optional
Method
- Slice and puree the beetroot.
- Preheat the oven to 175°C.
- Butter the loaf pan and dust it with flour.
- Use a hand mixer to whisk together 150 gm of the sugar, vanilla sugar, butter/margarine and the salt until it has a creamy consistency.
Add the eggs, one at a time.
In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder.
Stir in the flour mixture, bit by bit, into the egg-sugar-butter mixture.
Fold in 100 gm of the chopped walnuts.
Pour the mixture into the butter, flour-dusted loaf pan.
With a spatula spread the cake mixture out evenly and smoothen.
Bake for 45 minutes in a preheated oven at 175°C.
Take out of the oven and cool. - Melt the remaining 25 gm sugar in a small pan.
Add the remaining nuts and let it caramelise over low heat.
Keep stirring until the nuts are well-coated with the sugar.
Take off heat and place the caramelised nuts on a baking paper to cool. - Take the cake carefully out from the loaf pan and place on a cooling rack.
- Chop the caramelized nuts and place them on the cake.
Serve with whipped cream, if preferred.
Editor's Note: To bake healthier beetroot chocolate cake, consider replacing the sugar with grated jaggery.
To veganise this recipe, swap the eggs for flax seeds -- 1 egg = 1 tbsp ground flax seeds + 3 tbsp water. Use cashew butter instead of regular butter.
Chef Sabyasachi Gorai is a consultant chef and mentor.
