Beetroot and Cacao Brownies

It has not escaped me that since launching a small baking start-up, I've had no time to share any recipes! Oh, the irony! When I first started writing this blog at the beginning of the year I was having to pace myself a bit and hold back from posting something or other from the kitchen pretty much everyday. Still, the sabbatical is over and I always knew that once the Earth Heart project was underway there would have to be a shift of priorities!

Seasonal is as important to us as homegrown organic, though of course the two go hand in hand. You might think baking is all about sugar, flour and butter (or plant based alternative, of course!) but happily even cakes can enjoy a seasonal home grown twist. Fruit might be a fairly obvious bed fellow of sweet teatime treats and perhaps carrot cake is a relatively well known example of how vegetables can get in on the picture but it needn't stop there!

​Here is my first recipe that ticks the all the seasonal, homegrown, organic vegetable boxes and that is also all about the baking! Please give a warm welcome to Beetroot and Cacao Brownies! We've had a bit of a beetroot glut over recent weeks, if the word 'glut' isn't too ungrateful a sentiment to apply to these ruby globes of earthy nourishment! Perhaps 'abundance of beetroot' might be a more appropriate way to describe the quantity of delightful rosy tubers that have been bursting their way onto our plates like the vibrant, nutritional powerhouses that they are! But... we can only sell so many of what we can't eat. I've roasted, grated, sliced and fried and I fancied doing something else with them. Back in another life, I drank small shot bottles of beetroot juice before races as they were being marketed to runners as naturally performance enhancing super foods. I don't know if they improved my finish times at all. I've recently decided I prefer them in brownies. What a delightfully unexpected parternership it is too; the deep, rich, earthy musk of beetroot entwined with the soothing, gentle uplift of pure cacao! It's practically a health food, honest. It'll certainly make you feel better!

I'm being very specific about the cacao in this recipe. Of course you could use cocoa powder or a bakers' confectionery bar. I would have done once, until I was lead to the magical dance of high quality cacao very literally on one random full moon Friday night in Shrewsbury, thanks only to a newsletter that my predecessor must have signed up to receive to her work email! It was my discovery of Forever Cacao Club, the monthly event held by Forever Cacao, a small, artisan chocolate company who have a direct and highly responsible trade relationship with the Ashaninka community in Peru who in turn harvest, ferment and dry the wild grown, organic cacao that is then shipped to a small Welsh village (not very far from us at all), for alchemising into pure, ceremonial grade cacao and award winning chocolate bars. Cacao Club was the first time I'd found a regular place to go sober dancing since I stopped drinking every weekend after losing one of my best mates to alcoholism. That the (highly unpretentious) ritual evening began with a meditative cup of freshly brewed cacao before launching into a few hours of dancing courtesy of the accomplished and inspired resident DJ Pablo (who also just so happens to make the cacao) was an unrestrained delight and Cacao Club became a singular highlight of my month for quite some time. 

I know, cocoa powder was good enough for your gran and we're all on a budget. There are all sorts of ingredients I have to compromise on if I'm going to produce something that comes in at less than £8 a slice but now I've met actual cacao, there's really no going back. You are, of course entirely free to make this recipe with whatsoever chocolatiness you choose... but I shan't be held responsible for the consequences!!

It might be considered fool hardy or even reckless to invent a new recipe the day before you intend to sell the product but I like a challenge. Most of my bakes are the result of many batches of tweaking, tasting, trial and error, grumbles, sighs and plenty of that annoying thing people do when they serve you something they've cooked then proceed to tell you about all the ways they're unsatisfied with it . No doubt I shall go on to further refine this recipe but I was so happy with these fudgy little burgandy beauties that I thought I'd make up for my recent recipe dirth and share it to celebrate my first pop up bakery tomorrow! (at Dragons Craft Shop in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant from 10am to 5pm incidentally...)

I realise I've previously said I never really follow a recipe and that's true to an extent, but baking is a science as much as it is an art and you do have to be a bit more precise with a brownie than you do with a soup. Hence, instead of my usual, rambling 'recipish' here is an actual list of weights and measures along with an actual suggested method. But you know... Do whatever.

Organic Beetroot & Cacao Brownies

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• 125g Self Raising flour (gluten free is an option but reduce the liquid a bit, e.g. less liquid beetroot)
• 40g Ground 100% Organic Cacao
• 1 tsp Nutmeg
• 140g Raw Organic Beetroot, (grated and boiled down until you have about 200g mushy mixture)
• 100g Demerara Sugar
• 100 ml Maple Syrup
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• Pinch of sea salt​

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1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. The one I use is about 25 x 23 cm or thereabouts! 
2. Peel, grate and boil the beetroot. Don't use too much water. Just cover and boil until almost free of juice.
3. Mix (you can blend but don't have to) the beetroot, maple syrup, and vanilla extract. If you're using a stick blender, use a low speed or stay well away from anything you think might stain!
4. Mix the flour, cacao, nutmeg, salt and sugar in a large bowl and then gently fold in the beetroot. You may need to add a little more water at this point; but it will depend how wet your beetroot mix is. However much you decide to add (if any) add it slowly, a splash at a time. You can put it in but not take it out so easily! Ultimately you want a batter you can pour into your baking tin, not a lump as if you were making cookies but if it's too wet it'll never set. Good luck with that one. 
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and pop it in the oven for around 30 minutes. If it's still obviously runny, it's not ready. If it starts burning on the outside whilst still slopping about like a flow of lava when you tilt the tray, turn the temperature down and adjust your temporal expectations! You can check when you think it's cooked by inserting a skewer or cocktail stick into the middle; if it comes out pretty much clean then you're good. Don't worry too much if it still seems very soft at this point. It will keep cooking it's own heat and will set further as it cools. 
6. Allow it to cool thoroughly in the tin before turning it out onto a cooling rack (I'd use a sheet of greaseproof paper here too to manage sticking) and you might want to pop it in the refrigerator for an hour or so still more before you attempt slicing it.

It's worth mentioning that I updated this recipe after a bit of tweaking so the photos don't exactly​ match the instructions... but you get the idea! I get about 8 slices out of this bake. This is soft, gooey, fudgy, sticky, rich indulgence. But it's got some of your 'Five a Day' in it. Win/win.