Ages ago I mentioned the rather exciting beetroot experience that I’d had. Well, clearly, just mentioning that sort of thing is coyness beyond the coping powers of human endurance, so here is what that experience consisted of.

Chocolate Beetroot Cake
Get fists on…
8 oz sunflower oil (yes – the original recipe said butter, but hey – I’m all about the improvisation)
11 oz sugar
4 eggs
8 oz self-raising wholemeal flour
3 large tbsp cocoa
8 oz beetroot, cooked and grated (the original recipe asked for about double this; having tried it with what we happened to have, I’m glad I didn’t put more in, as I think it would have become a chocolate BEETROOT cake)
As much chocolate as you can justify (I used about 8 oz)
A slug of vanilla

Then…
Melt the chocolate over a gentle heat, with the butter and the sugar. I just slung the lot in a small pan and tried to employ what little self-restraint I have in both staying my hand from scooping the lot straight into my mouth and in turning the heat up full-blast to achieve lift-off that bit sooner; if you’re feeling capable as well as super-patient, you could bugger about with a bain marie if the fancy takes you. Let the resulting mix cool a bit, then beat in the eggs and the other bits and bats; again, if you’re super-patient and more Goody-Two-Shoes than me, you could even get out the sieve and do something other than look at the dried bits of rice on the edge of it before putting it back in the cupboard (what? that’s just me?). I grated the beets straight into the mix, which was tremendous fun, as well as being incredibly colourful. Give it all a good mix, and stick it in a loaf tin before whacking it in the oven at about 180°c for about forty minutes or so. Normal rules apply: it’s done when you can’t wait any longer a knife comes out clean; timings are always approximate because our oven is a big bag of shite.

Still to come: ‘Patchwork – When Colours Go Wrong’, and ‘Trousers on a Shoestring, or “How to chop up that shirt of Quercus’s that I’ve never liked”‘. (I bet WordPress is going to eat my quote marks for breakfast. Bastard template.)