The Red Beet Mystery

About author / Christine Gable

Culinary enthusiast; kids cuisine and slow cooking; magazine recipe developer; professional writer. Her simple recipes are great for family dinners.

Guess which of these happened this week with a bag of week-old red beets in the refrig drawer (that I didn’t have a clue what to do with)?

a) Ignored, they got more wrinkled daily, until I finally tossed ‘em
b) The kids ate them
c) Hubby ate them
d) They morphed into a rich chocolate cake

While a) is the most likely candidate and b) and c) are mostly pipe dreams, d) probably seems like a far-fetched fantasy too, eh?

Well, I just happened to swing by a local farm to pick up some tomatoes and cantaloupe, and that’s exactly how I happened upon a recipe for something called Red Beet Chocolate Cake.

Yuck, you say?

Well, it caught my eye … and glancing at the ingredient list, I thought it had definite possibilities. Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not trying to incorporate strange veggies into desserts—or going down the Deceptively Delicious road. And it’s certainly not because I love red beets in chocolate cake, mind you (never had ‘em, in fact). But since those 5 red beets had been hiding out a bit too long in the crisper drawer—left over from a healthy cooking assignment—this card struck at the opportune time. Visions of a dark, deep, rich chocolate cake sure were more appealing than red beet salad, Harvard beets, or any such common red beet recipe.

And isn’t that the case with most recipes that we end up trying?

Here I was, mindful of finding something interesting or even unusual to do with them—and voila: A red beet chocolate cake recipe popped up before my very eyes, thanks to the Pennsylvania Vegetable Marketing and Research Program (How convenient, since it also happened that I had a hankering for chocolate cake).

Truth be told, I’m really not much for substituting ingredients for others. You know, like putting mayo or applesauce in cakes, or taking out fatty ingredients and replacing them with fig puree, applesauce or other-such inventive (although quite entertaining) combinations. And ya’ll know how I feel about the whole Deceptively Delicious cooking idea and hiding other so-called “healthy foods” amidst sugar or calorie-laden desserts. While our family enjoys main dishes and vegetables and desserts (possibly the most of all!), we’re not so much for cross-overs.

But if you’ve never cooked fresh red beets before, don’t worry—it’s really not hard at all. The trick is in leaving the skin on to preserve as much of that beautiful beet color as possible. Then it’s easy to slide the skin off after the beets are fully cooked and lukewarm or cool.

So I cooked those beets and let them cool, hoping that my efforts would not be in vain. For if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a bad recipe—and especially a recipe that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into. Now, not that it’s hard to cook red beets—no, certainly not. But it does take half an hour of boiling until they’re tender. And then I let them cool so that I can slip the skins off easily (that’s actually the fun part). I’ve learned that if I don’t want stained hands and fingernails for a couple days to wear gloves and an apron to save the shirt against splatters. But after that part’s done, the beets are ready to use in whatever recipe is up. And on this day it was chocolate cake.

I’ll admit that I had a few doubts as to how it would taste. Yet as I smelled the mixing batter (my daughter even commented that it smelled good in the kitchen, thanks to that melting chocolate), it seemed all was looking good so far. Forever tinkering with recipes, I tweaked the sugar, oil, chocolate and flour to what seemed like workable ratios for 2 cups of beet puree. And then instead of a layer cake with icing, I decided to use a new mini muffin pan for cupcakes—and after I had filled all 24 wells, I had enough batter left over for 12 regular size cupcakes.

Well, they smelled divine baking—but as in all things cooking, the true test was the taste test. And here are our results:

• Right out of the oven: smelled wonderful, looked dark and rich, taste: very good—although we could detect a tad of different flavor

• Still warm, after cooling 10-15 minutes: color is beautiful, they held their height and peel easily from the paper. The taste is even better—I can hardly detect anything different than my favorite chocolate cake recipe

• Cool, after 1 hour: color and appearance is still beautiful, and the taste is excellent. Moist, delicate crumb, it’s hard to believe that I’m actually eating a nutritious veggie with my dessert.

• The next day: Excellent flavor and moist crumb.

But the true test was on real-life kids: What did they think of the mysterious red beet chocolate cupcakes?

It was unanimous: They loved ‘em. Oh, they were quite surprised that I had put red beets in ‘em, but as my daughter said: “If they taste good, I’ll eat them, Mom—even if they have red beets in them!” And the next day they even tried them out on friends—and they passed the test there too. (And, oh yeah, just so you know, they’re even more divine topped with peanut butter frosting.)

What’s not to love about that, eh?

Serves/Makes: 24

• 5 beets (2 to 3-inch size)
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 4 ounces unsweetened baker's chocolate, melted and cooled
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt