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I have wanted to try making Mary Berry’s Chocolate and Beetroot Traybake for ages! I saw her make it on TV in a BBC Christmas special called “A Berry Royal Christmas” where she was baking for charity events that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are involved in. Apparently, this chocolate and beetroot traybake has become one of Prince George’s favourite cakes… So I thought I’d give it a go now! I have added my own little spin on it as per usual and given you some tips for success, but the original recipe this is based on can be found here.
Adding beetroot to a cake – Does it work?
Root vegetables are full of natural sweetness and are used in baking all the time. Think of carrot cake for example! Carrot cake is delicious (check out my two carrot cake recipes below), and the carrot adds sweetness and moisture to the cake. But do you taste it? No. And it’s the same with beetroot!
The beetroot gives this Chocolate and Beetroot Traybake a lovely texture and keeps the cake moist for several days! In fact, this cake actually gets better with time as it becomes really fudgy after two or three days. You do not taste the beetroot at all (if you make sure to grate it properly, see below) and my flatmate didn’t notice a thing! Even when I told her that there was beetroot in the cake, she said she couldn’t taste it and still really liked it!
Despite the beetroot containing a few natural sugars, this Chocolate and Beetroot Traybake cake is not overly sweet! I quite liked it that way, and spreading apricot jam over it (see below) adds a little bit more sweetness. But if you do have more of a sweet tooth, you could add 25g more brown sugar to the cake mix, and/or use milk instead of dark chocolate for the icing.
Top Tips for making this Chocolate and Beetroot Traybake
Beetroot is messy and will stain everything! So to make sure you don’t stain your hands, clothes and chopping boards, I would recommend wearing some rubber gloves and peeling the beetroot over the sink. Then grate it directly into the baking bowl to avoid staining any chopping boards.
Make sure all of the beetroot is fully grated and doesn’t go into the cake mix in chunks. If the last bit is hard to grate, try to finely chop it with a knife. You really cannot taste the beetroot in the final cake when it’s grated, but you do get the odd earthy, beetroot-y flavour if you bite into a chunk of it!
In my humble opinion, every chocolate cake must be brushed with apricot jam before the chocolate ganache icing is added on top! It just makes every chocolate cake taste infinitely better! Especially with this beetroot and chocolate cake, which isn’t particularly sweet, it is nice to have that extra bit of sweetness from the jam and it also adds a bit more moisture! This is an option addition and isn’t included in the original recipe, but I would thoroughly recommend doing this!
More delicious Cake Recipes
I love baking cakes, and I have been making a lot of them recently! As we are currently still in COVID-19 lockdown, baking cakes and taking them to drop off at the door and surprise my friends has been one of my favourite (and only) things to do! Here are a few of my favourite cakes that I have made and shared with people recently:
- Spiced Carrot Cake with an Orange Cream Cheese Frosting
- Easy Carrot Cake Traybake
- Great British Bake Off Signature Chocolate Cake | Bake Off Box #1
- Vanilla Cupcakes with Buttercream
- Mary Berry’s Lemon Drizzle Cake
- Chocolate and Vanilla Checkerboard Cake
- Easter Chocolate Cupcakes with Mini Eggs
- Apple and Biscoff Traybake
- The *Best* Chocolate Brownies Ever with Pecan Nuts
- Cherry and Chocolate Traybake | Dr Oetker Kirschlikuchen | Copycat Recipe
- Sticky Toffee Cake with Pecan Praline
Mary Berry’s Chocolate and Beetroot Traybake
Recipe
Ingredients:
FOR THE CAKE
- 3 large free-range eggs
- 50g cocoa powder
- 150g self-raising flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 175g light muscovado sugar
- 300ml sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
- 225g raw beetroot, peeled and coarsely grated
TO FINISH
- 4 tbsp apricot jam
- 200g dark chocolate
- 200ml double cream
- 50g white chocolate, chopped
YOU WILL ALSO NEED
- Box grater
- Large mixing bowl
- 30x23cm traybake tin (available from Mary Berry’s Lakeland collection)
- Small piping bag/freezer bag
- Angled palette knife
- Cocktail stick/metal skewer
Method:
- Lightly grease a 30x23cm baking tin and line it with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Crack the eggs into the large mixing bowl, then add the cocoa, flour, baking powder and sugar. Use a wooden spoon to start mixing the ingredients together. Gradually pour in the sunflower oil and beat until fully incorporated and you have a thick batter. Finally, stir in the grated beetroot and mix until
- Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for about 35 minutes, or until well risen, springy to the touch and starting to shrink away from the sides of the tin. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool completely.
- Once cool, remove the cooked cake from its tin, peel off the baking paper and place onto a large chopping board.
- Gently warm the apricot jam in a small saucepan or heat in the microwave until it has a spreadable consistency. Using a silicone brush or metal teaspoon, evenly spread the warmed apricot jam over the top of your cake in a thin, even layer.
- To make the chocolate icing, break the chocolate into smaller pieces and place into a heatproof bowl alongside the cream. Then set the bowl over a small pot of gently simmering water (also known as a bain marie), but don’t let the water to touch the bowl. Stir until the chocolate has fully melted into the cream and the icing is smooth and glossy. Remove from the heat and leave to cool a little so that it is a thick pouring consistency (this won’t take long depending on room temperature).
- In the meantime, carefully melt the white chocolate in a bowl over the water bath/bain marie until melted. Keep the temperature very low as white chocolate can overheat a lot easier than milk or dark chocolate (check out more tips for working with chocolate here)! Once melted, spoon it into a small piping or freezer bag.
- Pour the dark chocolate ganache icing over the cooled cake and use a small palette knife to spread it out and cover the cake completely.
- Snip off a tiny corner of your piping or freezer bag and pipe the chocolate in parallel lines across the cake, about 2cm apart. To create a feathered effect, use a cocktail stick and drag it through the white chocolate in opposite directions across the cake. Allow the chocolate icing to set before cutting the cake into 18 pieces (cut into 3×6 pieces).
