Dark Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Peanut Butter Filling … Daring Bakers & Hidden Veggies!

“The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip…” Tom Robbins

A Dark Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Peanut Butter Filling seemed the best way to hide my gardens bumper crop of this earthy red vegetable. Veggies in my cakes are not new. I’ve made a Chocolate Beetroot Cake in the past, as also Tartines Zucchini & Orange Marmalade Tea Cake, and a Double Chocolate Zucchini Cake. However, the kids have grown up and are pretty much smarter now. They instantly pick the veggies out. More often than never, the poor beet gets the boot.

Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!!

Beets in soup didn’t work; the son hated the red even as my heart sang at the colour. Beets in veggie juice was given a thumbs down … “Do you have to Mama?“. Even the roasted beet salad that I love, didn’t work. Beet greens though went down happily in these Lamb & Beet Green Calzones.

Getting the veggies down isn’t as much a battle any more actually. The daughter LOVES char-grilled broccoli. Pizzas are made with a mushroom sauce, topped with an abundance of balsamic roasted thinly sliced veggies – bell peppers, onions, zucchini  eggplant. Chicken and mozzarella play saviour! No one ever figures out what lies beneath!

Funnily enough, I made an absolutely delicious carrot cake in the first week of March. I hadn’t seen the challenge then. The veggies in that case were also home grown and not hidden in the cake. That was the best carrot cake we’ve ever eaten!

Obviously I was in sixes and sevens as I bravely made a beetroot cake. The Dark Chocolate Beetroot Cake wasn’t easy to ‘declare‘ and in many ways the fear was within me. I kept thinking of ways to make something good better!

The cake baked nicely in just under an hour. I contemplated filling and frosting, tossing peanut butter and chocolate in my head. Peanut butter frosting was new to me, but one suggested in the recipe. Chocolate ganache was safe, simple and always welcome.

I settled for both. Peanut butter frosting to sandwich the cake, and dark chocolate ganache for the top. It felt safe. I left a single slice for the lad, muttering that I made something in a hurry and he could have it if he wished. Came back to find both the slices on my cake platter which I had just set up for photographs gone! Crumbs!! He announced, “It was really good Mama. Was that peanut butter inside? Really nice cake!“

Day 2: “Is there any cake left Mama. Oh yum! It’s really nice you know. I never thought a peanut butter frosting would taste so nice”! Of course I contemplated {read forever} if I should let the beet cat out of the bag. Nah!! Decided against it. What they don’t know can’t hurt them, but the cake is going to be on the table often!

Do stop by here and check out some novel ways of hiding veggies in your baking the Daring Baker way! Thank you Ruth for the really novel challenge. Thank you as always Lisa of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of  Cream Puffs in Venice for hosting this fab kitchen!!

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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India