Beetnik Cake!

Here is the real thing...beetnik cake!  My husband and kids love it.  And, I think I've found a way to get more fiber and folic acid in my diet:)

A brief history...

In case you have not read my last post, this quest to find a recipe for beetnik cake starts with my husband.  He has very fond memories of a chocolate cake with white frosting, made in the cafeteria of Midway School, in Fellows, California, that he calls beetnik cake.  We've never ran into anyone else that has any idea of what he is talking about.  So, a couple of weeks ago, I found a "beat n bake cake" recipe, that I surmised was the cake he had mistakenly heard referred to as "beetnik cake".  Before baking this Pillsbury recipe, I googled beetnik cake and found several recipes with beets in it, and dismissed this as a weird coincidence.  Surely no cafeteria in America would bake beets into a chocolate cake!

I was corrected by my best friend's grandmother.  Tootsie is a wonderful woman who spent a lot of years cooking in the cafeteria of North High School.  She informed me that she used to bake beetnik cake, and that indeed many schools used beets in their cakes...."How else do you think we would get those kids to eat their vegetables?"

So, I looked through the recipes again and baked up a true beetnik cake this afternoon.

Beetnik Cake

1 1/2 C well drained & mashed cooked beets

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 C white sugar

1 C vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 3/4 C all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

6 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a 13x9 pan.  Most recipes direct the pan to be greased and floured, but I don't like the look or the taste of that thin layer of flour on the outside of the cakes, so I just spray the pan with cooking spray, and have never had a cake stick to the pan.  With bundt cakes or other such cakes that won't be frosted, I grease and sugar the pans, so the outside of the cakes are still pretty and tasty.

I bought 1 can of beets, thinking that this would be enough for 1 1/2 C of mashed beets.

As you can see, I bought the generic brand found at Winco.  Tootsie told me they used the canned beets they received from the government and the cakes always tasted moist and delicious.  My mother in law has told me on several occasions that the government issued canned foods were of very good quality.  Anyway, the point is, you don't have to spend a lot on name brand beets.  However, you will need more than 1 can.  This can only amounted to 1 cup of smashed beets.  I did not run out to the store to get another can when I realized I was short.  I just baked the cake with 1 cup of beets rather than the 1 1/2 cups the recipe calls for.  Not sure it made a real difference?

Now, mashing these beets was not the easiest task.  Knowing that I didn't want to have to clean up beet juice from a lot of appliances, bowls, utensils, etc, I thought the easiest way to mash these would be to chop them up first and then mash with my potato masher.  Wrong.

Although they are softened, they are not easily mashed.  So, I had to drag out my mini processor.  This did the trick, quickly.

Next, I mixed this cup of mashed beats with the eggs, vanilla, oil, and sugar.  It sure looked pretty...

Then I added the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt, which I had mixed together in a separate bowl.

Then I poured it into the prepared pan, and put it in the preheated oven, and baked it for 25 minutes.

It was still a little wet on the toothpick when I checked it after 25 minutes, so I set the timer for 3 more minutes.  It was done and smelling chocolately after 28 minutes.  I set it out to cool before I frosted it.

I frosted it with a simple vanilla buttercream because my husband remembers it with white frosting.  However, I think any frosting would taste good on this...chocolate, mocha, or peanut butter comes to mind.

Vanilla buttercream frosting

3 C powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 C softened butter

4-6 Tbsp of half & half (I always use half & half when the frosting recipe calls for milk)

Mix it till smooth, adding more cream if too stiff to spread.  Then frost the cooled cake.

The finished cake is moist, chocolaty, and delicious.  We did not taste the beets at all, nor does the cake have a red tint.  This dessert was easy....and may find itself in my usual rotation.  The aroma of this cake baking in the kitchen this afternoon, kept my mind off the fact that we have a full week of school starting tomorrow morning, with more than 2 weeks until our next holiday...and that's good therapy.