Beetroot Brownies

Over the weekend I harvested some beetroot from my allotment. I was pleased to have some crops but didn't have a clue what to do with it, so I typed it into my trusty BBC Food website and came up with these brownies, the recipe can be found here. 

Ingredients:

400g raw beetroot topped and tailed and peeled. 

100g butter

200g plain chocolate

1tsp vanilla extract

250g caster sugar

3 eggs

100g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

I've never made anything with beetroot before but I have heard of the combination of beetroot and chocolate so thought it was worth a go. The first obsticle I hit with this though was cooking the beetroot. The recipe said to place it in the microwave for 17minutes, so I did and I ended up burning them and filling the room with smoke. I had a few more, but have to sacrifice the other recipe I was going to make in order to make this. Second time around I decided to cook them in some water on the hob. This worked much better and I got some tender beetroot. 

The beetroot was then mixed in a food processor with chocolate and butter. The heat from the beetroot melts the chocolate and butter and it ends up a smooth paste like mixture. 

The eggs and sugar are whisked until light and pale. Into this the chocolate mixture, flour, vanilla extract and cocoa are folded and this is poured into a tin.

Ready to go in the oven

It was baked in the oven for 25 minutes. This resulted in my brownies being firm, not gooey, so if you like a gooey texture I'd recommend doing it for a slightly shorter time. They were left to cool in the tin and then I sliced it up into 20 squares. 

Sliced into squares

The Verdict: I really like this combination of flavours, the beetroot brings a subtle sweetness to the brownies and really enhances the chocolate flavour. The resulting brownies are lovely and rich but also I didn't find them so rich that I couldn't manage it, in fact it made me want a second one. The recipe was OK aside from the overcooking of the brownies and beetroot. It's something I'd like to make again, maybe with a few changes but I'm not sure what yet. I would happily eat more. Having nevertried beetroot with chocolate it's certainly something I'd try again. One other slight issue I had with it was when I sliced it up the top was a crust and this just fell off. This may be linked to the slightly more cooked nature of my brownies so I'll reserve judgement on that until I've tried again with a shorter cooking time. 9/10, just the slight issues with the recipe. 

Ready to eat!! 

Week meal plan for 2 - 9/6/13

Today I made a new recipe for dinner which was tasty. I didn't take pictures as it isn't really baking but mum has suggested that I post a meal plan at the end of each week with tried recipes, what worked, improvements etc. I feel like this is a good idea and would work well with the blog. Unfortunately it's now Friday so this week's meals consist of just the 1 new recipe. I'll try and remember what we ate this week though to get this started:

Sunday - We can't remember what we had on Sunday so it obviously wasn't anything exciting!! 

Monday - I made a chicken "stew" this is very simple but Gary seems to like it. This is an old idea that I picked up from my mum over the years. I made a white sauce and added to it cooked chicken. Once this was a lovely thick mixture I added 2 chicken stock cubes and some frozen mixed vegetables. This is the served with rice. Very simple but effective. 

Tuesday - Left over from Monday. 

Wednesday - Meal out, I got back too late to make us dinner having a stressful trip out.

Thursday - Gary and I had a meal out courtsey of my parents, thank you!! First evening leaving Mini Manley on her own with Grandma. 

Friday - Chicken and Quinoa Salad with Beetroot yoghurt. This was a new recipe taken from the latest edition of the BBC Good Food magazine. At present I can't post a link, I think they may not post the recipe until the magazine is slightly older, but I will update this as soon as I can. I made a few changes to the recipe, instead of quinoa I used cous cous and instead of chicken thighs we had legs. To serve it make it go further I pulled the meat off the chicken and mixed this into the cous cous with the vegetables. We got approximately 6 servings out of the recipe. In order to make this go further next time I would add more vegetables that roast well, maybe pepper and tomatoes, to pad it out with cheaper ingredients. 

Saturday - We will have the left over dinner from Friday. 

So this week just the one new recipe but was very successful and has moved into the "to keep" pile.