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Red Velvet Cake (Vegan Chocolate Beet Cake)

Traditionally, red velvet cake is paired with cream cheese icing, easy-peasy now with good commercial vegan cream cheese. Nontraditionally, you can pair it with my chocolate frosting recipe below. Consider sandwiching the layers between a couple dollops of seedless raspberry jam.To ramp up the mild chocolate flavor of the cake, I went with . . more chocolate. My go-to recipe for chocolate frosting recipe is luscious, satiny, easy, quick and vegan.It keeps covered in the fridge for a week and in the freezer for a month or two, guaranteeing awesome chocolate delivery when you need it. Bring to room temperature then stir and spread on cakes, dip cookies, fruit, your finger.
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Ingredients
  

Red Velvet Cake (Vegan Chocolate Beet Cake)

  • 1-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup evaporated cane sugar
  • 1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • pinch salt optional
  • 1 smallish beet cooked* and cooled
  • 1/2 cup strong brewed coffee
  • 1/4 cup grapeseed or other neutral oil
  • 1 tablespoon white vinegar
  • 1/3 cup unsweetened almond milk or other nondairy milk
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Satiny Chocolate Frosting

  • 2/3 cup unsweetened soy or almond milk
  • 4 ounces bitter unsweetened chocolate, chopped small
  • 1 cup evaporated cane sugar
  • 4 tablespoons coconut oil
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions
 

Red Velvet Cake (Vegan Chocolate Beet Cake)

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Lightly oil an 8-inch cake pan.
  • In a bowl, sift together unbleached flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa and optional pinch of salt.
  • Puree the beet in a blender or food processor. Pour in coffee, oil, vinegar, plant-based or dairy milk and vanilla and process just until they reach a creamy, milkshake-like consistency. With a light hand, mix the wet ingredients into the flour dry till they coalesce and form a thickish batter.
  • Pour into the prepared cake pan. Bake for 45 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
  • * To roast your beets, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Slice the beet root from the greens. Wrap the beets (sans beet greens) tightly in foil. Place in a baking dish and roast for an hour, just as you’d bake a potato. In fact, you can do both at once. Make baked potatoes or sweet potatoes for part of tonight’s dinner and throw your beets in there, too. I think of it as culinary hitchhiking, (proper name: passive cooking). Remove from oven and let cool. When beets are cool enough to handle, the skins should slip right off.

Satiny Chocolate Frosting

  • Heat soy or almond milk in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to just boiling. Add chocolate. Turn off heat, cover pot but leave it on the burner for 10 minutes.
  • Remove lid, stir chocolate, which has now melted, into the nondairy milk. Stir until combined, then pour in evaporated cane sugar. Gently stir in the coconut oil and vanilla, continuing for a few minutes until frosting becomes smooth and glossy.
  • Let frosting cool slightly then pour into a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate for an hour or so to thicken, then frost as desired.