Chocolate Beet Cake

Well, March has arrived, and I am very surprised to report that I have made it through this winter in one piece. It has actually been a very nice winter! Maybe I shouldn't be saying this, though, could I be jinxing myself? The wind is blustery outside, and still slightly sharp even in the sun. The rivers and streams are running strong, and I can see the mud just starting to appear. I went to a sugaring event the other day and was told it was a good maple syrup season. I've been seeing bluebirds cavorting in the front yard! However, it still doesn't smell like spring. Do you know that smell? It's when the ground really starts to defrost and release it's earthy smell. It's still not there.

I can't quite believe that in only two weeks I'll be digging into my garden and planting kale and pea seeds. I also have a few trees to transplant--two crab apples that I started as whips and now are quite sturdy. Down with the rest of the baby orchard you go! Along with the quinces, plums and apples. And before you know it, the perennial patch will be sprouting asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries. This is absolutely my favorite time. The feeling of anticipation and longing is sometimes what makes winter so worthwhile.

But it's still cold, and baking little goodies is still on my mind, albeit made with low sugar and maybe something healthy tucked in. I'll say it again: I'm not against butter laden cookies or sugary cakes, but when I make something for the house (read: something I'll have constant access to) it has to be a healthy treat. I save my splurges for the bakery or chocolatier. And, if you have a little one in the house, you might want a treat like this. Though I will warn you: these are not sweet. At all. Even with a half cup of sugar! But the moist chocolatey-ness is really gratifying. It might be better, though, with some cream cheese frosting sweetened with maple syrup. Let me know if you do that, would you?

Chocolate Beet Cake
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 10 inch spring form pan.

1.5 cups white whole wheat flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoons of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
1/2 cup canola or coconut oil
1/3 cup milk or coconut milk

1.5 cups pureed beets*

1 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk together dry ingredients. Beat oil and sugar together until fluffy. Add molasses, oil, milk, beets and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry, and blend until smooth. Bake for thirty minutes.

*Preserver's Tip: Back when local beets were abundant, I boiled a bunch, peeled them and sliced them and threw them in the freezer. I was thinking future borscht at the time, but now they are all destined to become cake. Beets freeze phenomenally well. I also had some golden beet puree that became Golden Beet Blondies, but I neglected to write down the recipe. They came out quite nicely!

Cocoa Cake (sweetened with honey)

My refined sugar-less month continues. I realize that my sugar-free January is not entirely sugar-free. Laura from Glutton For Life, who has a gorgeous and beautifully written site that you should subscribe to if you haven't already, has thrown down the gauntlet and proposed I take on a real challenge of entirely no sugar (in the comments of my last post). No fruit!? To me that is almost impossible to even think about. Inconceivable! says my inner Vizzini (Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride). So, I said maybe next year. For now, I am learning plenty by making sure to eat sweets sweetened only with fruit, honey or maple syrup. I know agave has fallen out of favor, but I might succumb to Cashewtopia's Vanilla Bean gelato. It's really amazing.

I might be a big sugar-baby, but the emotional undercurrent of this detox has taken it's toll. I've had irrational moments in which I wanted to tear into cupcakes and chocolate bars. One of these moments prompted this cake. I think one of my biggest weaknesses is a chocolate cake. I don't need much, but I so desire it. In my impatience searching for a no-refined-sugar-added recipe online, I gave up when cakes with a 1/2 cup of honey also added a cup of sugar! That is an incredible amount of sugar, in my opinion. So, I riffed on some easy cakes in my repertoire and came up with this. It completely satisfied. And, ever the addict, although this cake is pleasantly not-sweet, I did drizzle some maple syrup on it and it fully squelched that cupcake piled with frosting lust I had been experiencing. It's also made in a snap. You can always add some sugar if you want, or more honey.

Cocoa Cake

1 cup of AP flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder

Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly. My baking soda and powder often clump, and so does the cocoa, so I run my fingers through to disperse any clumps. I guess I could use a sifter, but I'm sort of a hands on kind of gal.

1/3 cup of oil (vegetable oil, though I bet coconut oil would be delicious)
1/4 cup of honey
1/2 cup buttermilk (yogurt would be fine here)
1 egg
1 tablespoon of vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a square 8x8 pan. Mix wet ingredients to fully incorporate. Add to the dry ingredients quickly. Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes.

What it looks like in the Hudson Valley this morning.

Chocolate Milk Pudding

With a toddler needing my attention just about every minute, there is precious little time to invest in fancy stuff. To be honest, I'm not so fancy to begin with. As I've stressed in this blog, if it's not easy I just won't bother. And this, my friends, is one of the easiest puddings I've ever made.

We were in the health food store the other day, and my son, who enjoys tearing off without me and then grabbing expensive items he wants me to buy, had something in his sticky hands. He happened to pick up some Ronnybrook chocolate milk, which at $1.25 was just fine with me. Thing is, once I opened it on the bench outside, with a bendy straw and everything, he decided he didn't want it. I wasn't totally surprised, this guy doesn't really like chocolate. But it is mind boggling. I think it surprises him, too. He always asks for it, then realizes he doesn't really care for it.

Once home, I thought, "should I just guzzle this thing down? Save it for Steve?" Nahhh. With a bit of leftover cream in the house I thought chocolate milk pudding would be the answer. I adapted this recipe from the Joy of Cooking. It is soft and creamy, not very rich or chocolate-y, which shouldn't deter you from this simple, home-cooked pudding.

Once, at a garage sale, I bought some pudding ramekins and the woman selling them to me sighed that no one made pudding any more. I do! It's such comforting fare, and if you serve them in little four ounce canning jars, you can stash them in your snack bag with a little spoon and have it at work, a picnic or at the playground.

Yield: 4 four-ounce jars and one little bowl for tasting right away!

1 cup Ronnybrook chocolate milk (or any good, local whole chocolate milk)
3/4 cup of heavy cream
1/4 cup of sugar
pinch o'salt

Heat over medium-low heat until it reaches just below a simmer. Meanwhile, mix up these ingredients until smooth:

3 tablespoons of cornstarch
1/4 cup of milk

Add this mixture slowly into the heated chocolate and cream, stirring constantly until it almost simmers again. Turn down the temperature and stir well, you will see it start to thicken and get to that pudding consistency. Turn off the heat and add a good teaspoon of vanilla. Mix well, and pour into your jars. Let them cool down and then put them in the fridge with lids on them. If you don't like a skin to form on your pudding, put plastic wrap on the surface. 

I haven't tried this yet, but I'll bet these would make darn good pudding pops. You know, frozen pudding? Hmm...

Still life with rain, tulip and chocolate pudding.

Vegan Chocolate Cake

I should call this Ridiculously Easy Vegan Chocolate Cake. That you don't need much on hand to make. No milk? Eggs? Butter? No problem. It's a tasty, moist cake that will not disappoint! Even if you're not vegan. With all the holiday tasks to finish, sometimes you have to take care of yourself. That means that dinner last night was steamed veggies over brown rice. That also means beet carrot ginger juice. But it also means a little cake. And this is a nice way to indulge lightly.

I used a recipe from the Joy of Cooking called Dairy-Free Chocolate Cake, but I've also seen it on the internet in many places and variations.

Oven preheated to 375 degrees. Square 8" pan greased and ready to go.

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup of cocoa powder

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Mix together in a bowl. Add to the dry these mixed wet ingredients:

1 cup of water

1/4 cup of vegetable oil

1 tablespoon of white vinegar

2 teaspoons of vanilla

Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool in the pan for ten minutes, then removed from the pan to cool on a rack.

This cake gets that reddish tinge from the cocoa powder, where red velvet cake possibly originated from. The baking soda and the vinegar react to form this great squishy cake. You need the vinegar to activate the baking soda. You won't taste it!

Chocolate Cake with Figs in Sweet Red Wine

Okay, so this isn't chocolate cake. It's really vegan low-fat chocolate pear sauce (one word?) cake. It sure doesn't look like it, right? I hate to say, though, it tastes like it! By which I mean, it tastes like a cake with no fats in it. I mean, for what it is, it's good! Really good. And if you are vegan, or have little kids with constant cake cravings, or maybe big kids with constant cake cravings (or maybe it's just you, let's face it, huh?) but you want to curtail the fat intake, this might be the cake for you. And it's the easiest cake ever. Truly. I had lots of pear sauce in the fridge, and a bit of nice cocoa sitting around, so this cake came to the rescue.

More honesty: it's dry. But that's where this fig compote comes in! I had no idea how nicely figs and chocolate pair together. Maybe it's the wine that brings it all together. Fresh organic figs (from California, but I'm still poking around people's yards, and looking for some nice Italian folks who might have a fig tree around here) with sugar and a red dessert wine. I halved the figs, covered them in the wine, added a half cup of sugar and boiled for about ten minutes. They are incredibly good and dress up this cake perfectly. A little mint doesn't hurt, too! Just remember for your next photo shoot: figs, booze and mint. You'll look great.

Chestnut, Dark Chocolate, Salted Caramel Mousse

I would have never made this in a million years unless all the stars aligned just so. I happened to have one cup of sweet chestnut puree left and was looking for something to make. I had found this great simple recipe and was going to make it, but I was so tired and didn't want to do much of anything. A day or two before, I had attempted to make Beth Kimmerle's Soft Salted Chocolate Caramels, which was a disaster that left me with a hard block of candy that was delicious but threatened to pull your fillings out. In an effort to salvage the cream, sugar and chocolate invested, I heated a chunk of it in the microwave with some water (a tip I scavenged online) and mixed it into a rather decadent chocolate sauce. And there was some cream in the fridge that needed whipping and someplace to sit on top of, and for an excuse for me to eat it all.

To recap: I had one cup of sweet chestnut puree, one cup of chocolate sauce, and about two cups of whipped cream, all told. I mixed the puree and sauce together and folded in a cup of the whipped cream. I chilled it for a few hours and then served it mit schlag.

Oh my god, it was so incredibly rich that I couldn't even finish it. I had to return it to the fridge and eat it later on when I was ready again. With more whipped cream. I will probably never make this ever again, but dang was it sooo good.