Dessert? Beats, please!

[Beth]: Lately I have been doing a lot of baking, so I wanted to write a quick post about those adventures!  We often get beets in our CSA from Be Wise Ranch, and we are trying to find new ways to enjoy them.  We have gotten to where we like them just roasted in the oven.  But recently we got a recipe for beet cake.  Hmmm, I thought.  I do like cake, but do I really want to put veggies in my cake?  Granted, I do love carrot cake.  So I decided to give it a try!

The recipe was pretty basic and actually seemed quite similar to carrot cake (complete with cream cheese frosting).  It was the most fun grating up the beets in the food processor.  Check out the beautiful colors:

Well, the cake turned out delicious!  It definitely tasted (subtly) of beets, but it was super moist and the frosting was yummy.

Since the beet cake was such a success, I decided to try another recipe: chocolate beet bread.  But when I say recipe, I should say "experiment."  I found several recipes online for chocolate beet cake baked in the oven with no yeast.  And then I found a recipe for beet bread, but without chocolate.  No chocolate?  Really?!  So I decided to be bold and try to merge the two recipes.  I have a fair amount of experience with making various breads in our bread maker, but this was new territory.  Overall, crafting the recipe wasn't too difficult, and the bread came out fluffy and moist.  But it tasted too much like beets and not nearly enough of chocolate.  Note to self: in the future use about one cup cocoa powder instead of 3 tablespoons.

Finally, my birthday was last week, and we decided to make a cake for the big day.  Jared suggested German Chocolate cake, which we both really like and hadn't ever made.  We found a great recipe online and got started.  It was a bit complicated in that the cake is 3 layers and we only have 2 round pans.  It took a couple of hours to make the cake, between the shifting and reusing of pans and all.  The icing was really easy, though, and then it was time to assemble.  Like the previous baking attempts, the cake turned out wonderfully moist and perfectly sweet.  Happy birthday to me!!