Red Velvet Cake

Long before red food coloring, beets were the magic ingredient.  Ammen just celebrated a birthday, and we have an abundance of beets in the garden this year.  Naturally his birthday cake was a red velvet cake dyed with beets. 

The beets combined with the applesauce provide a sweet yet earthy flavor and a moist texture.  I frosted these cakes with a honey cream cheese icing because my husband will eat nothing else, but I personally think the icing was a bit strong for such simple cake.  If I make this recipe again for a different occasion I would do a simple honey butter icing or just serve the naked cake. 

As you can see, the batter of this cake is a brilliant magenta color.  After baking, the cake gradually turns to more of a brick red.  Unfortunately, I was too excited to eat the cake and didn't take a picture until most of the cake and color was gone.  The dyes faded more and more as the evening went on.   If you want to have the most red possible, bake this cake as close to the serving time as you can.  Luckily, the flavor and texture never faded.

Red Velvet Cake (With Beets)

Whenever possible, it's always best to purchase organic ingredients.  This is especially important when purchasing dairy products and eggs.  

 

Ingredients:

6 beets

1/2 cup applesauce

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 cup plain yogurt

2 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup spelt flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp sea salt

Directions:

Place beets in a pot and cover with water, boil until soft (about 30 minutes), allow them to cool.  Peel the beets and chopped coarsely.  Combine chopped cooked beets and applesauce in a blender and blend until smooth.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch round layer pans.

In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla, and then the beet mixture, mixing well.  Add the lemon juice and the yogurt and mix well again.

In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa powder, baking soda, flour, and salt together. Add to the wet ingredients and mix until well blended.

Pour batter into prepared pans and bake for approximately 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans on a wire rack for 5 minutes before removing from pans and allowing to cool completely.  Once the cakes are cool, frost them.

Honey Cream Cheese Icing

2 pkgs of cream cheese (8oz pkg)

1/4 cup local honey

1 Tbsp vanilla

Blend until smooth.  When the cakes are cool, spread with a rubber spatula on one cake.  Stack the cakes, and spread icing on the top. 

Nutrition

For the nutrition information on beets check out the post on Rosemary Red Soup.

Rest assured that cocoa does indeed have nutritional benefits.  As you can tell intuitively, chocolate is a natural anti-depressant, it's also very high in antioxidants and magnesium.  Antioxidants help fight free-radicals in our body, ultimately preventing inflammation and disease states (such as cancer).  Magnesium has a blood pressure lowering affect and is vital for our digestive, cardiovascular, and neurological systems. If you really want your fill on all the benefits of chocolate, you might enjoy the Theo Chocolate Tour.  There you'll get to taste all the chocolate you can dream of, and learn about this treasured food. 

I chose to use half spelt flour in the recipe rather than all-purpose wheat or even whole wheat.  Spelt is a grain that does have gluten, making it easy to bake with, but is more easily digestible than its typically overeaten relative, wheat.  Spelt is an ancient grain, and is thought to be an ancestor grain before wheat was hybridized.  Its is a great source of Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and Vitamin B3 (niacin) and manganese as well as insoluble fiber. 

It's not all about success

Do you remember in grade school when your teacher passed out the quiz and said, "Be sure to read the directions before you start." Of course you didn't read the directions, and neither did I. You went about circling the correct answers and sometimes just choosing your best guess until you got to the final question, which said, "go back and read the directions." Only then did you notice that the directions said, "Do not write on this quiz and raise your hand when you are finished reading." Doh, you wrote all over it in purple ink, and everyone else in the room had their hand held high.

Today, history repeated itself...

Ten years ago my sister introduced me to the book Feeding the Whole Family, by Cynthia Lair. Cynthia's philosophy, and now ours, is based on eating local, seasonal, and organic (when possible) WHOLE foods. What does that mean? Ask yourself, "Can I imagine it growing?" If the answer is "yes," it's a whole food. It's easy to picture a pear tree or a chicken coop, but tough to imagine what a xanthan gum flower looks like.

Today we were using this go-to cookbook. Cynthia baked the yellow-millet cake for her daughter's first birthday so, it must be worthy of Paxton's first birthday. Paxton was napping, and we had an hour to make his cake before leaving for the zoo.

Molly was in charge the dry ingredients and I of the wet. I blended millet with orange juice, maple syrup and egg yolk; then folded in the egg white meringue. All along Molly was sifting Bluebird Farms whole wheat flour baking soda and salt. The cake went in the oven, easy as pie.

"Oh no! Fatal error!" Molly yelps. Turns out Molly made quinoa and millet this morning and I had accidentally chosen the quinoa. In my defense, when cooked they look quite similar.
Baking is chemistry so, any changes to the recipe is a change to the formula which will affect the results. Both quinoa and millet are considered grains, but quinoa is actually a seed. Because seeds have more protein than grains, quinoa is the "grain" with the highest amount of protein. Therefore, we assumed by using quinoa we changed the cake's formula.

"Great, let's have a baking experiment, and this can be blog entry 2." We jinksed.

As we read through the recipe for the second time, Molly realized that she too misread the recipe and used 3 cups of flour instead of 2 cups in the quinoa cake. We decide to do 3 cups of flour again in the millet cake, because we only want 1 variable (the grain). After a few more mishaps, including: running out of eggs (and having to steal some from the neighbors chickens), spilling the yolk in the meringue, turning on the blender without the lid on, we finally got the cake in the oven. Before long, Paxton woke and the house filled with the smell of delicious, hot baked something...

Take note of Zach's reaction to the quinoa cake.

And Paxton running from the quinoa cake.

You may notice that there is no recipe posted here. That's because what we made is not worth remaking. If you want to make a millet cake, I would suggest you trying Cynthia Lair's recipe, I've heard it's delicious. It's a good thing Paxton won't remember this.