Bake at your own peril; Dangerously Good Beetroot Brownies

Those of you who follow me on Twitter might know that I’ve got a very exciting and hectic few weeks ahead of me. I’ll be relocating from Bristol to London just before new year to start a brand new job fundraising for the Prince’s Trust – an amazing charity, and one I feel absolutely honoured to be joining.

You may also have noticed my numerous tweets whinging about packing up my life – sorry about that! This will be the third time I’ve moved around Christmas, and my 13th move in 23 years on this earth. You could say I should be a pro by now – which I am – but it doesn’t make me detest the process any less.

So, clearly, I need incentives. Incentives to reward myself every time I clear out a kitchen cupboard, empty a bookshelf, or bag up half of my wardrobe. Yes?

The other night, I told myself that if I packed three boxes, I could bake some brownies. Three boxes, two bags, and a tidy kitchen later, I started making my brownies, smug at having surpassed myself. I adapted my recipe from one of my favourite books, and one I regularly bang on about – Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache – and got baking.

Now, I know that beetroot and chocolate are a good match. I just had no idea they were this good. These are some of the best brownies I’ve ever baked or eaten.

Don’t believe me? My lovely friend Sarah – fabulous foodie, fellow home baker and all-round goddess – described them as

‘totally f***ing amazing’

- a description she does not use lightly.

They are devilishly dense, yet miraculously light. Sweet, yet romantically dark and earthy. They taste like they should be a thousand calories, yet come in at 265. I could (and did) eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  They are – in short – dangerously good.

Bake at your own peril.

Dangerously Good Beetroot Brownies

(gluten free)

Ingredients

• 400g vacuum packed cooked beetroot (not in vinegar!) diced into small squares
• 100g ground almonds
• 3 medium eggs
• 220g golden caster or light muscovado sugar
• 70g cocoa powder
• 1/4tsp salt
• 150g dark chocolate (min. 67% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces.
• 3 tbsp white rice flour (or plain flour)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1tsp vanilla extract

To decorate

Chopped nuts of your choice – I used hazelnuts

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 160/325 F/ gas mark 3. Line a 27cm X 20 cm X 5cm brownie tin (I used a deeper square silicon tin, but rectangular would have been better). Lightly brush with a little oil.
2. Whisk the eggs, sugar, and salt with a hand-held whisk in a large mixing bowl for 5 minutes until tripled in volume.
3. Whack the diced beetroot into a suitable medium sized bowl and pop in the microwave with a splash of water for three minutes until piping hot. Blend into a puree, adding a little water if necessary – but not too much.
4. Ensure it’s still hot and throw in the chunks of chocolate. Cover with clingfilm and let the chocolate melt for a couple of minutes. Stir in the chocolate until you have a gorgeously purple puree.
5. Return to your egg mixture. Beat in the ground almonds, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and vanilla extract until well combined.
6. Add the beetroot chocolate puree and fold in thoroughly.
7. Pour into the tin, smooth with a pallette knife or the back of a spoon,  and sprinkle your chopped nuts on top to decorate. Bake for 35 minutes  in the middle of the oven.
8. Allow to cool in the tin for 20 minutes, before cutting into (small) portions.

Go on, I dare you….

Happy halloween! Gluten-Free Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes

Like many of you, this weekend my kitchen contained a pumpkin. Unlike many of you, I felt mine was just too precious to carve, so I did what comes naturally to me. I turned it into CAKE. Cupcakes to be precise – gorgeously light, subtly spiced, gluten-free ones.

These cupcakes provided a perfect opportunity to get in a bit more practice with sugarpaste, too – something of which I have very little experience – which was essentially like being left to my own devices for two hours with grown-up Play Doh. In other words – AWESOME.

I frosted them with orange buttercream, and got to work on creating outrageously cute toppers and decorations – not always uniform in style, but made with love and enthusiasm, nonetheless! This dinky witches hat is probably my favourite…

The recipe for the cake is adapted from a delicious butternut squash chocolate cake from the wonderful Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache, a book I bang on about to anyone who’ll listen, filled with gorgeous gluten-free (often low-fat) cakes made from vegetables.

It’s pretty unique in that it uses no butter at all in the actual cake – the fat element is made up of ground almonds, and its texture created by the grated vegetables. Now, if there’s anything I love more than cake, it’s guilt-free cake, and these little beauties come in at around 200 calories each – with frosting!

I warn you now – finely grating 200g of any unwilling veggie can be a little testing, but it’s well worth it – and quite therapeutic if you’ve got a little time on your hands.

Gluten-Free Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes

Makes 14

Ingredients

•  3 medium eggs
• 160g caster sugar
• 200g peeled and finely grated pumpkin
• 140g white rice flour (or plain flour will do just nicely if you’re not bothered about gluten free!)
• 85g ground almonds
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1tsp mixed spice
• pinch of salt
• 125ml buttermilk (I used greek yoghurt mixed with a little milk instead)

For the frosting

• 85g butter
• 85g icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• few drops of orange food colouring (optional)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees/160 fan/gas mark 4. Line your muffin tin with cases.
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a large mixing bowl for about 4 minutes, until pale and fluffy. It will be quite runny at this stage, but that’s normal.
3. Beat in the grated pumpkin, then flour, ground almonds, baking powder, bicarb, spices and salt.
4. Add the buttermilk or yoghurt and beat until well combined.
5. Pour into the cupcake cases until around 2/3 full, and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden on the top and a skewer comes out clean.
6. Cream together your butter and sugar, using the milk to help them along. Add in your food colouring a drop or two at a time until you get your desired colour. Be wary of adding too much to get a vibrant colour as it will affect the taste and texture of the icing and it may become unusable (speaking from experience!)
7. Once the cakes have cooled completely, ice and decorate as you like em – pumpkins, skeletons, eyeballs – the cakey world’s your oyster!