Sara Blackmore’s beetroot cake

Is beetroot the unsung hero of vegetable-based cake-making? I’m not convinced, but it’s still an interesting ingredient. Like carrot and parsnip (something I’ve not experimented with much in cakes), it’s a root vegetable that’s high in natural sugars.

This recipe came from the leaflet that comes with our veggie box and Sarah Blackmore, it says in the accompanying blurb, is the wife of a Devon beetroot farmer. So if anyone would know what to do with this slightly unpopular veg, it’d be her. I’ve changed it a little bit.

450g SR white flour
1t ground nutmeg
1t cinnamon
1t allspice
220g light soft brown sugar
125 walnuts, chopped
2 ripe bananas, mashed
300g beetroot, cooked and grated
4 medium eggs
300ml sunflower oil

Grease and line a deep 20cm, round tin.
Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan).
Clean the beetroots, but do not peel or top and tail too aggressively. Boil until tender.
Sift together the flour and spices.
Stir the nuts, sugar, banana and beetroot into the flour.
Beat in the eggs and oil. Beat until well combined.
Pour into tin and bake until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins, then turn out and cool fully on a rack.
Present iced with cream cheese icing (225g cream cheese, 85g icing sugar, 2t lemon juice) or just a sprinkling of icing sugar.

It’s not bad. I reckon beetroot might lend itself better to chocolate cakes (I’ve got a few choco/beetroot recipes I’ll post at some stage), but this is still a delicious, wholesome cake that’s very like a good carrot cake.