Beetroot chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream recipe

This beetroot chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream is rich, very chocolatey and so delicious you wouldn’t know there was beetroot in the mix. It’s a great ingredient to use in a chocolate cake where it delivers texture and moisture without altering the flavour. To make it even easier I cooked the beetroot from frozen using McCain frozen beetroot so this fast tracks the process very nicely.

This beetroot chocolate cake recipe is the recipe I developed for the Food24 Made with McCain Family Cookbook Campaign which launches today. Food24 and McCain have partnered to bring you South Africa’s first Cookbook Creator that allows you to make your own personalised printed cookbook, delivered to your door. It’s a piece of cake simply upload a few family recipes and select others from their handy pre-made categories, and voila! You’re a few clicks away from a cookbook of your very own.

Once you have designed and curated your own cookbook, including a custom name, you send it off to get printed in a hard copy. This could be a really special gift for a foodie-loving friend or family member this Christmas. Of course, you could just make it for yourself.

This cake can be made in a loaf tin (23cm x 13 x 8cm loaf tin (aprox 1.5litre capacity), or a medium bundt cake tin with a similar (or bigger) capacity. Adjust the baking time down to an hour for a bundt tin and spray the tin very generously with baking spray. As oven temperatures vary, start checking the cake for about 1 hour.

Recipe: makes 1 large loaf or a medium bundt cake

Prep Time:20

Cook Time:1 20

Ingredients

Cake:

300 gms McCain frozen beetroot
200 gms good quality dark chocolate with 70% cocoa solids
3 free-range eggs separated
200 gms brown sugar muscovado or demerara
165 ml sunflower oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
100 gms almond flour
150 gms flour
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder

Chocolate buttercream icing:

80 gms 70% chocolate melted and then cooled
170 gms butter
125 gms icing sugar
40 gms cocoa powder
1 Tbs very strong coffee or espresso
½ tsp vanilla extract
Chocolate shavings or walnuts to decorate
Beetroot powder to sprinkle optional

Instructions

Place the frozen beetroot into a microwave container with ½ cup of water and cook on high for 8 minutes. Drain and allow to cool.
Heat the chocolate in a bowl of a double boiler and then allow to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F
Process the beetroot in a food processor with the sunflower oil until a smooth consistency (there might still be a few very small chunks), about 3 – 4 minutes.
Separate the eggs and using an electric mixer, whip the whites until stiff peaks. Remove from the bowl and set aside.
In the same mixing bowl, add the egg yolks, sugars, beetroot and oil mixture, vanilla, salt, chocolate and almond flour and mix until well combined for about a minute.
Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and add them to the wet batter and briefly mix until incorporated.
By hand, gently fold through the whisked egg whites.
Line a 23cm x 13 x 8cm loaf tin (approx 1.5litre capacity) with baking paper. You could also make a layered cake and divide the batter between 2 lined 18cm cake tins (adjust the baking time down accordingly) or one bundt cake (just grease this vs lining with paper).
Decant the batter into the loaf tin and bake for 1 hour and 10 – 20 minutes and until a sharp knife comes out clean when inserted into the cake. Loosely cover with tin foil to prevent over-browning if necessary. * note that if you make this in a bundt tin or in 2 layers the baking time will need to be adjusted to around 1 hour.
Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely
Make the icing sugar by melting the chocolate in a double boiler and then allowing it to cool to room temperature.
Whip all the other ingredients together for a few minutes until fluffy. Ice the cake and then decorate the cake with chocolate shavings or walnuts.

Servings: 1 loaf cake

Author: Sam Linsell

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3 Comments

I make a beetroot chocolate loaf many times, but the frosting is a great idea! Looks delicious and a great way to hide fiber, too. I’ve never heard of beetroot powder. What does that taste like?

Hi Sam, I would like to bake your beetroot chocolate cake. I live in Spain and Mc Cain frozen beetroot does not exist here. Even raw beet is not very comun here, but cooked beetroots are very comun. Do you think the 300 grams froozen beetroot can be replaced by 300 grams cooked beetroot?

Hi, yes cooked beetroot would work well too just the cooked weight would be a bit less as beetroot loses moisture during cooking. So perhaps around 250gms? you can always add a little milk if the batter is too thick. Beetroot powder is literally dehydrated beetroot ground up so it tastes like beetroot and used as a garncih.