Beet Chocolate Cake:
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 cups cooked pureed beets
1 T vanilla
2 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
Bake at 375 F.
Begin by cooking enough beets to make 2 cups of puree. We estimated randomly and ended up with the exact right amount, I advise doing the same. Wash the beets, remove the tops and bottoms and any bad spots, and cut into quarters. Place into a pot of water, and bring to a boil. Simmer until the beets are soft (probably at least half an hour). This probably removes all of the nutrients from the beets, but it's less of a pain than roasting them or cooking them in the microwave.
While the beets are cooking, melt 4 oz of unsweetened chocolate, broken into chunks, along with 1/4 cup of oil. If you melt chocolate in the microwave, make sure to only heat it in short bursts and stir in between, or you'll ruin your expensive and formerly delicious chocolate.
After letting the beets cool a bit, remove the skins (pull them off if they come off easily, otherwise peel them). Then puree! A food mill works well; a blender or food processor would also do the trick. And you are left with exactly 2 cups of beet puree.
Meanwhile, beat together 3 eggs and 1 3/4 sugar. I recommend breaking the eggs perfectly in half:
Beat the sugar and eggs until they're fluffy, then mix in the remaining 3/4 cup of oil and the 1 T vanilla. Next comes the most exciting part--adding the beets! This actually is not a very exciting process, but will turn the batter into an exciting fuchsia color.
Mix for a while and enjoy the bright color, then pour in the melted chocolate. I like to pour the chocolate in slowly because I'm always paranoid that the heated chocolate with cook the egg, and leave me with a batter filled with small pieces of scrambled egg. There was a traumatic incident involving scrambled-egg-hot-chocolate when I was in college, that's all I want to say about that...but believe me, not at all delicious.
After the addition of chocolate, the batter continues to be an awesome purple/pink color that is somewhat disturbing. Next, mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder, then add to the batter. Mix just until the flour is incorporated, you don't want to overbeat the batter and end up with a tough cake.
After adding the flour, the batter should be a little lumpy, and now a weird purply-brown color, which means it's ready to bake!
Preheat the oven to 375F, and pour the batter into greased and floured cake pans. I went with two 6" cake pans, plus a few cupcakes; the recipe would probably make at least one 9" round cake.
Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool completely on a wire rack.
To make a layer cake, slice each cake horizontally with a bread knife. Frost between the layers, and then cover with additional frosting. Cream cheese frosting turned out to be delicious:
1 package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
confectioner's sugar
Beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add confectioner's sugar (at least 3 cups) until the desired frosting consistency is reached. Add a small splash of milk if the frosting gets too dry.
If you want to feel like a giant, use a tiny spatula to frost your tiny cake!
Finally, this cake is best enjoyed in the sunshine, with a glass of milk. The cake ends up slightly more red than a normal chocolate cake, and with the slightest hint of beets--although I'm not sure thatyou would immediately guess beets as the secret ingredient if you didn't know beforehand.
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