Beet Red

« Brownies with an unusual ingredient; beets. »

Beets have always been an icon of Russia and Eastern Europe. Perhaps it is their blazing red colour associated with Communism or the vast quantities of borscht we imagine them eating at every meal. Borscht, borscht, borscht, it's the Russian Chef! I will admit that no day passes at the office lunchroom without beets in one form or another on the menu so maybe the stereotype isn't without good reason. You don't have to like beets to live here, but it certainly helps. :)

While leafing through a few older issues of Ruoka & Viini, I noticed a picture of a chocolate dessert that looked like something I'd want to eat. When I read the caption, I had to read it a few times before I believed what I was reading: Beet Brownies. I thought, oh god, beets are invading dessert now too, and then I smiled thinking that these are so damned weird, I just gotta make some and spring them on my unsuspecting colleagues.

I had never imagined beets might be used in baking even though nobody finds the thought of carrot cake strange or unusual. Both are root vegetables so why is it odd for beets to be used in a brownie recipe? I went hunting for the provenance of the recipe and didn't find much at all, save some certainty that it is surprisingly not from Finland, Russia or Eastern Europe. One interesting shred I found from James Beard was related to the utterly, utterly disgusting red velvet cake fad of late, where enormous amounts of red food dye are added to a chocolate cake, that mentioned maybe the original red velvet cake used beets to get the bright red hue.

The Scarlet Batter. Although everyone in our office could immediately picture this cake (chocolate, bright red crumb, white frosting), its lineage was surprisingly hard to trace. Few of the usual sources even mention it. (Beard, however, does give a recipe in American Cookery, which calls for red food coloring and cocoa.) Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts describes it as a four-layer American Christmas cake. That didn't sound right to us, so we dug deeper. An amateur culinary historian friend of ours suggested the cake was originally made from beets and cocoa at a time when chocolate was dear. Cocoa, incidentally, accounts for the cake's velvety texture. Several other sources describe red velvet cake as a traditional Southern specialty. We next called Jennifer Appel, who serves a delicious version at Magnolia Bakery in New York City's Greenwich Village. People think it's southern, she told us, but it actually originated in the 1950s in the heart of Manhattan -- at Oscar's at the Waldorf -- and from there traveled South. Joe Verde, the current chef at Oscar's, confirmed the story, but says when he researched the cake's history in the Waldorf archives a few years ago, he couldn't find a single mention of it. "Still, for some reason it's attributed to us, so we take credit for it," he laughed. The cake's popularity faded in the '70s when red dye No. 2 was linked to cancer. Today, Oscar's serves an updated version, which is made from bittersweet chocolate ganache and is dusted with cranberry powder.

The red velvet cake is all over the map, but there is very, very little mention of brownies to be found. I find the suggestion that the beets were used during times when chocolate was scarce somewhat dubious, but it would explain how the mention of beets used in cakes is so scarce after about 1940.

Beets are like catsup where, once outside the containment field of the bottle or skin, you begin to find bits of red everywhere. Use small beets as the big ones are tough and take forever to cook. Presumably you could use non-pickled canned whole beets, but the colour won't be as good.

These brownies disappear fast and few would guess the mystery ingredient is beets. It's yet undecided if they are better with whipped cream or the cream cheese frosting so it just depends on which taste appeals to you more as both are quite tasty. There's great fun to be had serving these and surprising people stuffing their mouths that they're eating beets. :)

Beet or Ruby Brownies

Serves: 8-12
Time: about 1 hour including bake time
Source: Ruoka & Viini

• about 2-4 small beets or 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup of beet puree
• 100g or 3.5 oz baking/semi-sweet chocolate
• 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1-2 teaspoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
• 100g or 7 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup ground nuts

1. Butter and dust with cocoa a 23cm/8-9 inch round cake pan. Heat oven to 175C/350F.
2. Boil beets with skins until soft. Peel and puree with a hand blender or grate finely and mash. You should have about 1,5 dl of beet puree.
3. Melt chocolate and allow to cool.
4. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla sugar together and set aside.
5. Cream butter and sugar together and add eggs one at a time until the mixture is smooth. Add chocolate, beet puree, and flour mixture individually, mixing well. Fold in nuts.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Serve when cooled with whipped cream or ice cream or ice with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 ounces or 225g cream cheese , softened but still cool
• 5 tablespoons or 70g unsalted butter softened, but still cool
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups or 3dl confectioners' sugar (4 1/2 oz/ 127g)

When cake is cool, mix cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla at medium high speed in clean bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment ( or in large bowl using handheld mixer) until well combined, about 30 seconds, scraping down bowl with rubber spatula as needed. Add confectioners’ sugar and mix until very fluffy, about 1 minute.