Well Seasoned Blog

I have been on a bit of rampage lately, frustrated by the insurgence of designer cupcakes on the market and the pitiful shortage of actual cake. I’m sure you know those of which I speak…a cake, made with flour, sugar, eggs & butter. Some are multi layered, some are made in regular old square pans, and some are iced, some are not and, if you play your cards right you can even get a Bundt. My friends are sick of my cake vs. cupcake rant so I am not going to bore you with it her but suffice it say I have taken the bull by the horns. Recently searching for sweet inspiration in some of my favourite old cookbooks, I came across a recipe for Red Velvet Cake, the old school kind that uses cooked beets to intensify the color & add moisture. Apparently, during WW ll when foods were being rationed bakers grated boiled beets into their cake batter to replace the color, moisture & flavour they would otherwise get from the fat and cocoa powder. Enter, the mighty Beet. Part of the amaranth family, the beet doesn’t ever really get the kind of play it deserves, in my opinion, it is completely underrated. Just when I forget how great they are I come across them in a recipe or on a menu in a restaurant and it takes me back to wanting to eat them more often. Now, I will acknowledge they are a bit of a pain – there’s all that washing, peeling, cutting, boiling and of course, cursing those crimson juices that seem no matter how careful you are, to end up exactly where you didn’t want them. Well, I have a quick fix for that, beets come in a can and rarely are there casualties from opening a can! Now, they aren’t going to have that same fresh from the earth vibrancy of flavour that they have when you go to the trouble to cook the fresh ones & you aren’t going to enjoy that sense of accomplishment one gets when they have conquered a pile of beets but these ones for my little Red Velvet plan were just the ticket. So, into the recipe go the 1 cup of pureed canned beets along with the rest of the ingredient, a mix, a good scrape of the bowl and 1,2, 6 my cake is in the oven. After nearly exploding waiting for the cake to cool I am finally able to apply the generous layer of cream cheese frosting not just once but twice, I am pretty sure this is why the layer cake was invented – it is a brilliant way to increase your frosting intake. I think this alone is a great argument for cake vs. cupcakes … I digress. The old school Red Velvet was a revelation and the beets although you could taste them I am not sure if you didn’t know they were there if you could actually identify them. The cake was moist & perfectly delicious; I was able to take an extra bit of pleasure in it knowing I was eating my veggies for dessert. The world needs more cake.