What to do with a beetroot

So, a little bit of a cheat this week.  I know, already!  Not even a month in and already I'm bending the rules.  This week's Experimental Thursday is more of an Experimental Sunday Afternoon.  I knew I had a mad-busy day planned today and that the last thing I would want to do at the end of it was cook.  So, rather than whirling about a hot kitchen, tonight I'm cuddled up at the PC with a cup of tea and a slice of something interesting.

You see, I was rather glad to have the excuse to explore a side of cooking more suited to a Sunday afternoon than a Thursday night, and more suited to large gatherings than to meals for one to two and a half: cake!

Baking a cake in an evening is an increasingly common occurrence for me, as I don't often get the chance to concentrate for long enough during the day, but I think trying to pass cake off as dinner is a stretch too far.  Even if the cake in question did afford the opportunity to use up a significant component of this week's veg box.

Hang on a minute?  The title is all about beetroot and yet she's clearly made carrot cake you are all thinking.  Au contraire.  The title is correct.  Tonight's post is all about what you can do with a beetroot, without reaching for the vinegar and a large glass jar.  Not that there is anything wrong with pickled beetroot.  In fact there is quite a lot right with it, but it hardly counts as experimental.  Especially when you could do this with your beetroot instead:

Yes, that lovely, fluffy slice of cake is Beetroot and Seed Cake, again taken from the wonderful Tender Volume I by Nigel Slater.  I absolutely promise to make something from a different book next week, as I am aware the last three recipes have all come from here and I must be sounding like a broken record.  But seriously.  How can you not love a book with a recipe for beetroot cake?

My only mistake was not photographing the mixture for you.  It was the most divinely ridiculous purple colour of any cake mix I have ever seen, and yet not a bottle of food colouring in sight.  I will confess to being a shade disappointed when I removed the cake from the oven to discover all that lovely purple had cooked away to a much more normal shade of brown, but this does have the advantage of enabling you to simply refer to it as "cake" and not reveal its root vegetable oddness to your tea party until they are happily tucking in to their second or third slice.

And I truly believe that they will do.  This cake is fantastic.  Rather like carrot cake, it doesn't taste obviously of its base ingredient.  Beetroot cake has an earthy, rich and almost malty flavour, reminiscent of tea-loaf or gingercake.  The texture manages to be both dense and light all at the same time.  I can't quite explain that properly, but the cake has definite substance, and yet, thanks I think to the beaten egg-whites that you fold in at the end, it is soft and fluffy in your mouth.  You sort of inhale your first slice because the texture is so surprisingly light for such a dense looking cake, and then the flavour, all smooth, mellow, autumnal warmth, lures you back for another.  The lemony icing cuts through this with a toothsome tang.  It really is marvellous with a hot cup of tea and a good catch-up with some friends.

Our assembled party was two of my good friends, plus our five children.  All, except the one who insists she doesn't like cake, partook and all enjoyed it.  Baby Bird loved it and has got excited every time she has seen the cake tin since, so a ringing endorsement from her.  It also received a major thumbs up from Hubby and two of our best mates, who joined us later in the evening.  Hubby went so far as to compare it with the Nigella Lawson banana bread recipe that I use (taken from Off Duty), which has been a family favourite for about five years now.  As I am generally asked to make banana bread at every potential cake opportunity (including a standing request for it at the work charity coffee mornings), I'm taking this as the highest form of praise.

So, if you don't fancy pickling the beetroot in your veg box this autumn, why not bake it into a cake?  Or better yet, buy a large bunch and do both.