Chocolate Beetroot Fudge Cake

I made this recipe up, but the chef was Simon.  He was pretty pleased with the final result.  I must say, it ended up a pretty impressive looking cake and he did an excellent job. 

I don’t like beetroot, but I can eat this cake.  Simon reckons he can’t notice the beetroot.  I can, but only as an earthy, hard to describe flavour.  I think the beetroot makes this cake taste really rich, like there is lots of melted chocolate in it, when there isn’t, there’s just a bit of cocoa powder.

Our cake is two cakes layered together with chocolate cream and iced with chocolate ganache (recipes are below the cake recipe).  We made two different cake batters, but I think if we were to make a double layer cake again we would make one giant one so that the cakes are the same texture.  The bottom layer of our cake had more beetroot in it (large beetroot) and is more fudgy than the top.  I’ve given the recipe for one cake, so double the quantities if you want to make a layered cake. 


Ingredients:
50g cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
150g brown sugar
175g flour
1 teaspoon salt
160ml sunflower oil
3 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 beetroot, peeled and grated (I recommend wearing gloves to avoid staining your hands)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 170°C.  Grease and / or line a 22cm tin.
In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.
In a medium sized bowl, whisk the wet ingredients together, excluding the beetroot.
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined.  Fold through the beetroot.
Bake for 45 – 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake can be removed cleanly.


Chocolate Cream:
1 cup cream
2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
Beat all the ingredients together until you are happy with the consistency; you do want it quite thick.  Add more icing sugar or cocoa to taste.


Chocolate Ganache:
250ml cream
250g dark chocolate melts

In a medium sized pot heat the cream until bubbles start to form around the edge of the pot, but the cream is not boiling.  Stand for two minutes.  Add the chocolate to the cream and mix until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.  Refrigerate until you are happy with the consistency; we left ours to go reasonably thick but you might like yours to be more runny and drizzle down the sides of the cake.