Beetroot and Blood Orange Brownies

You might remember a couple of weeks ago I wrote about visiting Bettys in Harrogate, and I spoke about a salad I shared with my parents. The salad had beetroot and blood orange in it and the combination of the two flavours was delicious, absolutely the highlight of the salad. Tangy and light alongside deep and earthy.

Like I said at the time it triggered a bit of a cake thought in my head. Beetroot cake is nothing new, but I've never tried it, so I thought it was high time I did, with some bonus blood orange just as we reached the end of the season.

I had a good Google and read so many chocolate beetroot cake/brownie recipes I thought my head was about to explode. I took something from almost all of them, and came up with my own version, as none of them had quite the combination I was looking for - melted chocolate and cocoa powder for ultimate chocolate-ness, meted butter not oil and fresh beetroot. The end result was am incredibly rich, dense, gooey brownie that was refreshingly different from my normal brownie recipe (which you can find here).

Beetroot and Blood Orange Brownies

85g Dark Chocolate
240g Butter
300g Caster Sugar
3 Eggs
300g Cooked Beetroot
30g Cocoa Powder
150g Plain Flour
50g Ground Almonds
1tsp Baking Powder
1 Large Blood Orange

1. Cook your beetroots. I washed mine, boiled them until quite soft (time depends on size of beetroot) then washed them in cold water and rubbed off the skin before finally grating them.
2. Preheat the oven to 180oC and line your tin. Size doesn't really matter, the thicker the mixture is in the tin the longer it will take to bake!
3. Melt the chocolate together with the butter and then add the caster sugar.
5. Add the eggs one at a time followed by the grated beetroot.
6. Sift all of the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture, folding in gently.
7. Chop the blood orange into rounds and cut the skin off.
8. Pour the mixture into the tin and place the blood orange on top.
9. Bake for around 45 minutes, or until a knife comes out nearly (very very nearly) clean).