Beet Red Velvet Cake

I've always liked red hair, I don't know why when I'm usually all 'stick to black hair features' when it comes to hair issues. Don't do weaves, had my hair natural for a long time till I had to temporarily bow to pressure from certain sources and all such examples of hippiness that I display sometimes. So I don't get why I like red hair, not like many black people have that naturally except malnourished kids, even that's not natural really. Anyway, much as I'd like to get that full blown red in my hair, I loathe the idea of the chemicals necessary to get my hair red so I use natural stuff like cinnamon (when I have time to spend 2 hours washing it out of my hair) and henna (when I can find the good quality stuff these days) to get a little bit of a tint.

So if I don't like colouring chemicals in my hair, imagine how much of a no-no it is in the kitchen, the oven specifically. The red velvet cake craze has not caught a hold of me because I can not imagine pouring half a bottle or more of #40 red food colouring in a batch of batter. In my head, that factory that makes red hair colour simply pours out a small amount from each batch and uses that for red food colour. I know things are probably not that bad but that's just what is playing out in my head. Can't ignore my head when it decides to gear into imagination mode, bad things happen lol. And even though it's not the same stuff, they still both pack in a ton of iffy chemicals which I can happily forego (not that I don't currently buy things that have colouring in them even if I try to avoid it but at least I can decide not to make anything with it myself).

And then, I fell in love with beets. Red, sweet, earthy, crispy, delicious beets. At first I'd just take the skin of one and eat the lot and get my tongue very red in the process (if only I knew beets when I was a kid, the fun I'd have had), then I started chopping it up in salads; amazing with ginger and honey dressing. And for a while I was content with all that till I thought of the potential of that brilliant red colour - hair colour, drinks and of course red velvet cake! When I moved to Abuja, I thought finding beets was going to be a trial till I tried one day to ask for beetroot instead of beets and suddenly all the carrot sellers in Wuse market started pulling out these roots I never noticed before from below their tables. Major score!!! And I just figured out they are even cheaper at the supermarkets if stocked, at the market you have to haggle a bit or buy a lot to get them to sell one for about 100 naira but you can get 5 for about 200 in Amigo.

Can you see? Just a tiny bit more beets in the bottom
than the top but you can really see the difference

Finally, I have come to the main point of this little spiel (sorry, I like history, that should be why :), I happily present below red velvet cake absolutely free of any red food colouring, made with beets. The beets, by the way, do not overpower the cake at all so even if you don't like the taste of beets (shock, horror!) it'll still work well. Beets actually bring out the taste of chocolate which you'll notice if you try this beet chocolate cupcake recipe, which is different from red velvet cake because it looks brown like a normal chocolate cake. It's important to follow the recipe or at least put in the same amount of acids i.e. lemon juice, vinegar, natural cocoa powder (not dutch processed cocoa powder because that has all the acid washed out and not sweetened chocolate powder like Milo). The acids are important because they keep the cake red; if there are too many alkaline ingredients in the batter, your cake will just start to turn brown when you put it in the oven. That's also why I use baking powder instead of baking soda/bicarbonate of soda as the latter is alkaline.

Okay, enough bla bla bla on hair, history and chemistry, here's red velvet cake with an ermine (or cooked flour) frosting.

2 1/2 cups (370g) barley flour (or flour of choice)
4 tablespoons (20g) natural cocoa powder
1 teaspoon (6g) salt
1 tablespoon (4g) baking powder
1/2 cup (113g) butter
1 tbs (12g) vanilla extract
1 cup (200g) sugar
4 eggs (regular or flaxseed 'eggs' or a mix of both)
1 cup (240ml/250g) buttermilk
1 cup beet puree (made from 3/4 roasted medium beets)
3 tablespoons (45g) fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons (30g) vinegar

For frosting
1/2 cup (120ml/125g) milk
2 tbs (15g) flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter (113g)/avocado (half a medium avocado is about 1/2 cup)
1/4 to 1/2 cup (50g to 100g) granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredient Notes
The ingredients make one large cake or two cake layers to sandwich with frosting. You can divide ingredients in two and make two batches of batter or just make a large batch and divide.

All the fiery red goodness

I most definitely advice you to roast the beets, don't just boil. For one thing you'll lose some colour if you boil but most importantly roasted beets taste even better; they smell and taste like roasted corn, I swear, I walked into the kitchen and was like 'sniff, sniff, where's the corn??!'. It's amazing and I never knew till I roasted the beets to make cake. To roast simply spray 3 medium sized beets lightly with oil spray or just coat very lightly with oil, wrap in foil and put in the oven (180 C/350 F/Gas mark 4) for about an hour or till you feel it's tender when cut with a knife. You can also just oil and place in a baking pan or a sheet if you don't have foil. Try not to eat it all but just in case maybe you should add an extra one for eating. To make the beet puree, peel the beets after cooling (this is much easier when roasted as the skin just comes off without a knife), cut in little bits then puree in your blender or food processor. If using a blender, you'll need to add some liquid so I usually blend it with the vinegar and lemon juice to avoid adding water. However, if your blender still needs more water even after you've tried to move the beets around with a spoon, then add water bit by bit till it starts blending properly. To make sure there are no lumps you'll have to cleanse your hands (and nails) properly and feel in there to get them out. Really tiny lumps are okay, they'll dissolve when baked.

Leftover bran or hull, not sure which, from 1st sift of 1 cup barley flour

Barley flour is a flour made from barley instead of the usual wheat so it is a low gluten flour and has more fiber and all that healthy blah. I found this TRS brand for 550 naira in Next supermarket in Kado, Abuja but I believe the Spar/Park and Shops should also have it as they usually stock products from that brand. As it is low gluten, it does not rise as much as all regular wheat flours like all purpose flour. I like it for this recipe because I believe red velvet is supposed to be a bit dense anyway (at least some say so, the www suggests there is a lot of argument when it comes to the right texture for red velvet cake). The usual wheat flours also work well, I'd be more careful with other alternative flours like coconut flour, almond flour etc as I don't know how they would affect the whole acidity issue. This barley flour brand also needs triple sifting (which is a bit of work and also measuring out 3 cups of flour then sifting 3 times leaves you with about the 2 1/2 cups needed) so I'm on the look out for a brand that doesn't have quite as much bits of bran or hull or whatever this one has in it.

Cocoa Powder and Soy Milk

As I said above try and look for natural cocoa powder, dutch processed powder has been stripped of acids and even if the label doesn't clearly say dutch processed, you can guess it has been processed if the ingredients include sodium carbonate or potassium. Natural cocoa powder is just cocoa powder and is usually light brown in colour while dutch processed is usually dark brown.

Buttermilk is expensive if you can ever find it so I make basically the same thing this way; add 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to 1 cup of milk, mix and let it settle for about 15 minutes. You'll see the milk will get thicker and taste like yoghurt. You can use any milk for this, I use soy milk and that's what I use anytime milk is called for in a recipe, works the same.

While, I would usually try to substitute all or some of the butter in the recipe with avocado which is creamy and works just like butter in baking (you can use the creaming method and all that), the acidity issue comes in here too, don't want to throw things off balance. Also the green tint from avocado may dull the red. I also don't use a healthier oil like coconut oil instead of butter because it's really important to use the creaming method to get the little rise I can get from barley flour. All in all, this red velvet is definitely a celebration and not an everyday cake (Is there an everyday cake?), doesn't take too kindly to healthy substitutes. Good margarine may be used in place of butter though.

See how to make flaxseed 'eggs' here if you have flaxseed or flaxmeal and want to use it or want to buy some because the cholesterol in eggs is ridiculous and we're not getting younger.

If you used normal butter for the frosting you'll get a white/yellowish frosting but if you use some or all avocado, you'll get a green frosting. Perfect for Christmas! I like using ermine frosting because you can use much less sugar in it that buttercream and other frostings (don't even get me started on royal icing, for making things like flowers and parts of decoration that need to be hard IMO). While the thickness of buttercream depends on the icing sugar so you can't reduce, the thickness of ermine comes from the cooked flour. By the way, the frosting does not taste flour-y at all and has a really light texture, just beautiful. It also saves you the pointless of buying icing sugar when you have a bag of granulated sugar, although you can blend granulated sugar into icing/powdered sugar (just add a tablespoon of cornstarch per cup) but why stress you and your blender.

Preparation

Pre-heat oven to 180 C/350 C/Gas mark 4

Prepare your pan or pans (8/9 inch round pan or square pan) by oiling and flouring even if you cover with foil paper.

Whisk together flour (sift the barley flour a number of times as described above if using this), cocoa powder, salt and baking powder in one bowl.

Whisk together buttermilk and beet puree in another bowl. Also include lemon juice and vinegar if you did not add to the beets when blending/processing.

Beat butter till the texture gets light and fluffy and it looks lighter in colour. Add sugar slowly while still mixing, this process takes up to 30 minutes if you're just using a whisk or fork like me. With an electric mixer though, you're good on medium for like 10 minutes. Don't know why I like to suffer smh.

Add vanilla extract to the creamed butter and sugar and keep mixing.

Add eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition.

Mix in the liquid mix (milk and puree) and the dry mix (flour et al) alternatively with the creamed butter i.e. add about a third of the liquid, stir, half of the dry, stir, a third of the liquid, stir, other half of the dry, stir then end with the final third of the liquid. So start and end with liquid. Mix till combined. If using barley or any other low gluten or gluten free flour, try not to stir much after it's combined as it'll be bad for the final texture.

The easy red: You should get a red batter as long as you added beets.

Refrigerate for 1 hour to overnight if using barley or any low gluten/gluten free flour as they need more time to absorb the moisture. With normal wheat flours just pour in pans and place in oven right away.

Bake for 30 mins or when toothpick inserted comes out clean.

The less easy red: the point when you look through the oven glass after 20 minutes and rejoice because it stayed red, Yes!!

Let cool before placing in fridge. It's best to put a cake in the fridge for about an hour before frosting.

Frosting

Whisk flour into milk and heat on medium, stirring frequently till thickened but not yet a paste.

Remove from heat and whisk in salt

Cover with plastic wrap/cling film and let it cool.

Cream butter and sugar like for the cake above and add vanilla, continue mixing.

Add the milk to the creamed butter, medium speed with electric mixer for 10 minutes and with all your might for 15-20 minutes if using man or woman power :)

Note that ermine frosting usually looks a bit curdled as it's not as smooth as butter cream but if it's too much then just keep beating until it smooths out. Also if it looks watery then let it set in the fridge and keep beating.

Frost your cake (which I really pray came out red too), adding frosting between the two layers of cake, cool in the fridge for about an hour (unless you're one of those folks I don't get who like hot cake *shrugs*) and enjoy.