A Simple Beetroot and Chocolate Cake Recipe

Chocolate is one of England’s most popular dessert foods. And supermarkets everywhere sell millions of chocolate cakes and puddings. But how much better to make your own chocolate cake, using English beetroot?

This beetroot & chocolate cake (Rainbow Nourishments) is super-simple to make, and makes use of beetroot, an English favourite vegetable (its natural sweetness lends itself beautifully for cakes). This is an Aussie take on the popular ‘red devil’ combination in the USA of chocolate and beetroots.

Avoid caffeine for pregnancy/nursing. Read more on food safety for people and pets (chocolate, nuts and many other ingredients are unsafe near animal friends). 

For tinned ingredients, pop lids inside cans (or pop ring-pulls back over holes) to avoid wildlife getting trapped).

This is a classic wet vs dry recipe, though you have to cook and blend the beets beforehand (don’t use vinegared beetroots, it won’t work!) If you don’t fancy cooking them yourself, most indie greengrocers sell them warm and freshly-cooked, if you get there early mornings.

Wait until the plantmilk and beetroot are cool before blending. 

The chocolate is given an added kick with espresso coffee. So the earthiness of the beets helps to bring down your ‘mental temperature’ with all that caffeine!

While the cake is cooling, make the chocolate ganache, and chill for a couple of hours. You can make this cake extra colourful by adding the beetroot water to vegan butter (Flora is free from palm oil) and icing sugar, then swirl them together.

Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for a few days, in an airtight container. The cake is more ‘pink’ the day of making, but will still taste as good, if not eaten straight away.

Vegan Chocolate Cake (no flour required!)

This homemade chocolate cake (Rainbow Nourishments) is not just vegan and simple to make, but doesn’t even need flour! There’s nothing wrong with good flour, but it’s good not to eat too much of it, especially wheat flour.

This fudgy cake is not too sweet, made with no oil (it uses applesauce) and sweetened with coconut sugar. The secret ingredient is almond flour (which is not really flour) by whizzing up slivered almonds until they turn into what looks like flour! It also means this cake is rich in protein and calcium.

Choose organic European-grown almonds, as American almonds have ethical issue with migratory bee-keeping etc (in simple terms, they are harming bees, by the way they are grown).