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Sweet sweet Friday: Beetroot Cake

All I seem to be eating at the moment is cake, biscuits and bread, washed down with copious amounts of tea and wine. I think they call this the Stress diet, where your body tricks you into thinking that a nice wedge of cake will make you feel better. The act of making a nice cake is also a good distraction - and this one even has beetroot in it, which means it scores points on the balanced meal scale.


Beetroot Cake
This owes a little to a Ray McVinnie recipe published in Sunday magazine a couple of months ago, which he in turn gave credit to The Silver Palate Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso. The icing - my version of an Ottolenghi recipe - is so good I have to stop myself from eating it all before it goes on the cake.

120g rice flour
20g cornflour
40g ground almonds
300g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2tsp baking soda
3/4tsp baking powder
1Tbsp cinnamon
1Tbsp ground ginger
40g desiccated coconut
3/4 cup sunflower oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1tsp vanilla
240g grated beetroot
3/4 cup crushed pineapple, well drained

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line a 23cm springform tin.
Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Add the oil, eggs, vanilla, beetroot and pineapple and mix again. Pour into the tin and bake for about 45 minutes, until the cake passes the skewer test. Place on a rack to cool completely, then turn out of the tin and slice through the middle horizontally. Spread half the icing (recipe follows) on the bottom layer, plonk the other half on top and dollop on the remainder. Eat with a fork.

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting - inspired by the Ottolenghi Cookbook
Beat together 100g super-soft butter with 75g soft brown sugar (or that lovely dark, sticky muscovado sugar, if you can get it) and three tablespoons of golden syrup. Then beat in 200g cream cheese (room temperature) until you have a satin-smooth mixture.

Hope you all have a sweet weekend x
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