Beetroot Cake for sick days.

I'm sick with Tonsilitus. It came on quite suddenly on Friday morning and by the time I got home on Friday night my glands felt like they were the size of domestic fridges and my head was throbbing rhythmically. Saturday and Sunday passed by in a headachie, sore throat-ie, exhasuted blur and now its Monday and I'm off work eating soft food in my pyjama's. Woe. Is. Me.  It meant I missed the March for the Alternative, which I was pretty bummed about.


I'm not a good patient. I don't like just laying down. My feet get sweaty. TV bores me. I don't have the mental clarity to read. One can only sleep so much.  So on Saturday I baked a cake... naturally.


I had been dreaming of Beetroot cake since I ate it last weekend at Petersham Nurseries cafe,  so I decided I wanted to bake one myself. Despite being sick. Well, I only got so far before I needed to retreat to the sofa and boss my mister around instead. 


We adapted the following recipe.

Beetroot Cake 

250g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
150ml vegetable oil (I used ground nut oil)
300g caster sugar. Or normal sugar if you don't have caster.
3 eggs, separated
A pinch of salt
300g raw beetroot.

For the icing:

• Icing sugar
• Butter
• Some beet mash (A good band name, don't your think?)

 Do this:

• Line a 20cm cake tin with parchment. Or just grease it if, like me, you cba*.
• Preheat oven to 180° C/GM 4.
• The original recipe called for the beetroot to be grated but I decided to juice it instead as I thought it would create a more purple cake. I don't know why, don't question me. Unfortunately our blender broke so I was forced to boil then mash the beetroot instead. Don't mash it too much though, a few little lumps are good. Mmm. Save a tablespoon of beet mash for the icing, mind.
• Mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt; beat in oil and sugar.
• Beat in egg yolks and beetroot mash.
• Whisk egg whites until stiff, gently fold in using a metal spoon, keeping it as light as possible.
• Spoon into the prepared tin, bake for 1 hour until springy to the touch. Leave cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn onto a cooling tray
• Once cool, make the icing. I don't have quantities but mix it until it is the consistency of porridge. 
• To create really neat icing, place the cake casing back around the cake and clip it closed. Drizzle on the icing liberally and allow it to set completely. When you remove the casing you will be left with a thick pink icing that sits neatly on top of the cake.  Like the head on a Guiness, I thought. 

I wanted to make this cake really really purple with bright purple icing. The mixture looked promising as it went into the oven...

But unfortunately it lost its colour as it baked. Darn. It did however have little juicy lumps of beetroot in the sponge which was pretty and incredibly tasty. And the icing was bright pink, which made me ridiculously happy. 





It was incredible. Similar to carrot cake, but prettier. It really was perfectly moist. And there is nothing quite like a bright pink cake to lift ones spirits either. 


*CBA means cant be arsed. I stole it from my younger sister. At first my mister and I mocked her and used at home in jest, in a 'we're hilarious and talking like the young uns' kind of way. But then it stuck. Like a bad face pulled in the wind. Whats worse, however, is that now we kind of love it... And we find ourselves using it in our normal everyday speech. And, whats even worse, is that 'cba'  has somehow morphed into 'ceebs'. Yeah. As in:


H: We should really clear up this mess.
D: Yeah.... but ceebs.
H Yeah, me too. Lets just sit here. 


Or 
H: Ah man. I should totally shower, but really, ceebs. 


Its onomatopoeic. And Lazy. And satisfying. Try it.