Here’s the deal, sugar muffins…
Peggy over at My Fiance Likes It, So It Must Be Good does some pretty cool shit. One of which is extending an open invitation to submit your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) goodies on her blog each week. This not only promotes happy food consumption, but also creates a sense of community and connection to each other around food and the ways we are engaging with it on a sustainable level….Plus, it’s good promotion for those of us with blogs to link back to!
After posting a couple weeks ago it came out that Peggy and I both love our golden beets. I suggested we have a “golden beet off” – yeah, we’re dirty. Imagine my excitement when she accepted my lewd offer! Today we’re guest posting on each other’s blogs with what we each created and are leaving the judging up to you.
After posting a couple weeks ago it came out that Peggy and I both love our golden beets. I suggested we have a “golden beet off” – yeah, we’re dirty. Imagine my excitement when she accepted my lewd offer! Today we’re guest posting on each other’s blogs with what we each created and are leaving the judging up to you.You can go see my post by clicking here.
So, without further ado, heeeeeeeeeeere’s Peggy!
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Hello everyone! I’m Peggy from My Fiance Likes It So It Must Be Good and I’m completely flattered that Kristy would consider me for a guest post! My first one at that!
Kristy e-mailed me not too long ago after noticing that both of our CSA shares had tons of Golden Beets. She proposed we have a “Golden Beet Off” – and yes, it’s okay to giggle at that, because my immature self did so profusely. So if I can do it, you can do it too. All kidding aside, I loved the idea! She suggested we both do guest posts on each other’s blogs to showcase our beet-inspired recipes and have you all try them out and tell us which you like better! Being the competitive type, I’m always up for friendly competition!
Then a problem arose. When Kristy originally e-mailed me, my golden beets were already devoured. I thought “no problem, they’re local so I’m bound to find them here at a Farmer’s Market or Whole Foods or something” – yeah, the golden beet gods were not havin’ it. Not a golden beet in town. So I opted for the plain old red beet. The more prevalent beet of them all.
Now, the way I approached this challenge was to live by the mantra of my blog. If my fiance (Andy) likes it, it’s gotta be good. And we’d been getting a lot of beets in our CSA this year, and every time I used them, I could hear Andy mumble on about how he didn’t like beets and he won’t ever like them, etc. That just gave me just cause to make him like them.
So what better way to get someone to like something than to disguise it in something sweet? Andy always says that something isn’t a dessert unless it has chocolate in it. So the first thing that came to mind was chocolate cake! I can totally have him fooled into liking beets that way! I’ve seen tons of beet cakes on the blogosphere, so I knew this would be something that could work out. I just took my favorite chocolate cake recipe and added a puree of roasted beets to the batter, and voila – the sneakiest, most evil, chocolate cake is born. Let’s check it out…
Chocolate Beet Cake
Ingredients
- 1 & 3/4 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 & 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 & 1/2 cup pureed roasted beets
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 9-inch spring form pan or cake pan.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa and sugar.
- In a small bowl, combine the pureed beets, eggs, oil and vanilla extract.
- Make a well in the dry ingredients and place beet mixture in the middle.
- Mix until just combined. The batter will be a gorgeous shade of red, very reminiscent of red velvet cake - which was also a selling point to Andy because that's one of his favorite cakes!
- Pour into spring form pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean.
- Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
- Wait until completely cool before icing. The only reason I didn't use a homemade icing recipe was because I had a can of some premade stuff that I wanted to use up. And well, Andy likes it - so I gotta give in to some processed stuff.
- Slice and enjoy!
Verdict? Andy claims he could still taste the beets, but it wasn’t off-putting enough for him to not finish his slice. Or the next one either.
So what do ya say? Who wins the “Beet-Off”?
Personally, I think we both win! And technically, Kristy wins for actually using golden beets!
I had a ton of fun and hope you guys had fun reading both of our posts! Maybe we’ll have to do this again with some different vegetables and fruits? Eh? Another challenge awaits perhaps?
Heather Anne
August 18, 2011 at 4:01 PMHaha, the beet off. I giggled because that’s my humor right there.
What a great idea! If you can use zukes, why NOT beets?! Well done.
Heather
August 18, 2011 at 4:48 PMOMG! I love chocolate beet cake! My traditional “maritimer’s” recipe uses mint extract as well…..delish!
Rita
August 18, 2011 at 6:04 PMWAy to go Peggy! Looks wonderfully good!Love all your photos; keeping this one for sure.
Rita
Peggy
August 18, 2011 at 9:27 PMAhh this was so fun! Thank you so much Kristy for pushing my creative buttons and forcing me to make my fiance eat a cake with beets in them =)
Going to be trying out your quinoa salad this weekend, and I’m sure I’ll love it!
Stella
August 18, 2011 at 9:43 PMAh, love the naughties, Peggy. Have you seen the gorgeous video where they make a beet cake? Yours looks just as dreamy.
Nami | Just One Cookbook
August 19, 2011 at 5:22 AMOhh this was interesting guest posting! We could see two recipes using the same ingredient. I love it! Peggy, your beet cake looks delicious. You know how much I love beets… now it’s in the cake. YUM!
patience
August 19, 2011 at 7:00 AMi honestly don’t like beets, (my grandfather once told me they were squirrel’s tongues) and the flavour disagrees with me. but the beet off comment is flippin’ brilliant!