It is hard to believe that me, lover of all things vintage, did not have a bundt
cake pan up until two weeks ago. Yes, I know, SACRILEGE for a baker worth its salt! So I looked, and looked and looked and looked, online and in many different shops, until I finally decided on a fairly cheap but metal one (I find them better than the silicon ones when it comes to baking) in a beautiful turquoise colour that matches the beautiful ramekins I recently used for my all-time favourite coconut pannacotta. And then I started looking for a recipe fitting such a beautiful pan. And I came upon what will now forever be known as the biggest fail red velvet beetroot cake, which is why I haven’t mentioned this in the title of this post. The cake tastes great, it has wonderful texture and the combination of the flavours with the cream cheese in the center is the best part of it, but it’s simply, and as you can clearly see from the final picture, not red at all. Never have I ever put so much care into making sure this came out the desired colour and been so sourly disappointed. But again, the cake itself was a great success. We ate about half of it at home and the scarce leftovers were reluctantly taken to the office to avoid a major self-induced sugar high.
The cake tastes great, it has wonderful texture and the combination of the flavours with the cream cheese in the center is the best part of it, but it’s simply, and as you can clearly see from the final picture, not red at all.
You can certainly taste the beetroot in the mix, but it’s so subtle and well combined with everything else that you wouldn’t guess if you didn’t know beforehand. In fact, many of my work colleagues tried unsuccessfully to guess at the sneaky ingredient. My recipe is an adaptation of this one, however I’ve made some modifications to fit my preferences and of course there’s the fact that I included a smooth and rich cream cheese filling.
I loved it and I’m hoping that you will too! This is what you’ll need:
- 230g raw beetroot
- 180g buttermilk
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 3 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbps vanilla extract
- 600g flour
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 120g butter
- 120g vegetable oil
- 300g sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 150g cream cheese
- 50g powder sugar
- Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a bundt cake pan and dust with some flour. Put aside.
- Peel, chop and purée the beetroot until very smooth. Mix immediately with the buttermilk, white wine vinegar, lemon juice and vanilla. This should have theoretically paused the oxidization of the beetroot for the cake to turn out red, maybe you’ll be luckier than I was!
- Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.
- In another bowl beat the sugar, oil, and butter together until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
- Alternating, add the flour mix and beet mix, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
- Prepare the filling: beat the cream cheese together with the powder sugar.
- Take the greased tin and pour in half of the cake batter. Then with the help of a spatula or spoon spread it towards the sides creating a sort of well in the middle. This is where the filling will go.
- Carefully scoop the filling (I do this with an ice cream scoop) and drop it in the center of the batter. See the pictures below for guidance.
- Once the filling has been added, carefully scoop the remaining cake batter on top of it, making sure none of the filling is touching the sides of the pan and it is completely covered by batter.
- Bake at 200ºC for 15 minutes. Then cover it with tinfoil and continue to bake for another 30 minutes. Take out of the oven and allow to cool before unmolding.
Enjoy!
