Chocolate Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I've recently become acquainted with a garden owner/constant veggie source, which is paradoxically awesome and problematic; while I thoroughly enjoy frequent access to fresh-grown produce, I have nurtured a deeply-entrenched dislike for beets for more than three decades. Yet they keep showing up at my house, furtively mixed in with zucchini, tomatoes, spaghetti squash, and various and sundry herbs. Thankfully, the internet exists, and there are a plethora of ways to use beets in recipes whose final products don't taste like they contain beets. In particular, I was intrigued by the beet chocolate cake recipe I kept coming across, so that is the topic of today's baking adventure. (I know last time I promised you peaches. I'm a beet-inundated liar, what can I say? Next time, there will probably be peaches).

After comparing various version of this recipe, I chose this variation from The Modern Cook for two reasons. First, it didn't try to pressure me into adding a beet-flavored frosting to my beet chocolate cake like so many of the others did (In college we used to love the "How Many Is Too Many" game. I believe it originated with Oreos, but can apply to so many life situations...like beet cake with beet frosting. Seriously? Please). The Modern Cook's recipe called for adding two cups of beet purée to a generous helping of cocoa powder, sugar, and other normal baking ingredients, and then topping the cake with regular cream cheese frosting, all choices to which my beetoclastic pallet and I were amenable. Second, I had all of the ingredients for the cake and frosting already in my pantry and fridge. Decision made.

So here are what cooking beets look like. They needed to be soft before I could purée them, so into the pot they went. The cooking process took more than half an hour, and by the time it was done, my kitchen was a humid, beet-smelling jungle.

After they were soft enough, I peeled off the skins and cleaned up the hairy, root-ingrown pockets. Everything from my cutting board to my fingernails was pink.

The beet chunks went into the food processor and puréed for a few minutes. This is probably when the smell was at its earthiest, and I was having serious doubts about my decision to try to bake with ingredients that make my stomach quiver...in the bad way.

Once the beet-preparing portion of the recipe was complete, things started feeling much more dessert-like in this recipe. I added the eggs, butter, sugar, and dry ingredients, which, when coupled with the beets, created a delightfully pink batter.

Also, while the beets had been cooking, I prepared my 4oz. jars with non-stick spray and hand-cut parchment paper discs in the bottoms. The batter, originally intended for two 9-inch cake pans, filled 2 dozen jars.

The first adjustment I had to make to the original recipe was to reduce the bake time from 45 minutes down to 30 for my little jars. When half an hour had passed, a toothpick inserted into their middles told me that my cakelets were done, so I took them out, let them stand for about 10 minutes, and then cooled them on wire racks while I prepared the (mercifully beet-free) cream cheese frosting.

The second adjustment I made was to double the frosting recipe. The prescribed amount may have been enough for two layers of 9-inch round cakes, but for me to adequately fill two layers of little jars, I needed a little (ok, who am I kidding...a lot) of extra to work with. While the cakes cooled and I made the frosting, I made sure to run my jam jars through the dishwasher so they'd be clean and dry for the next steps.

After making the frosting, I transferred it into a quart-sized plastic zipper bag (we call those "poor-girl's pastry bags" in this kitchen) and let it chill in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes so it was easier to work with. Then I went through the process of slicing each cakelet in half, replacing the bottom half in a newly-cleaned 4oz jar, adding the first layer of frosting, setting the other half of cake on top, and finishing things off with a generous second helping of frosting. This may sound tedious, but I surrendered to my OCD tendencies and had a ball making everything even and pretty and nice.

The finished products were uniformly adorable. When I taste-tested them, I swear I could still detect a (fairly strong) hint of beet flavor, but maybe I'm being oversensitive. I'm going to do some blind sampling with my colleagues at work, and we'll see if they can pick out the mystery vegetable haunting the recesses of this dessert's flavor profile. 

My admittedly-subjective and unfounded beet prejudices aside, these cakes were moist, and the sweet, tangy frosting was the perfect complement to their rich flavor. Maybe, just maybe, by the time I finish devouring all of these cuties, I'll have acquired a new-found tolerance for the freak of nature that is The Beet (but let's not hold our breath). 

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Pretzel Tart

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and I feel like the 4oz Kitchen has been a bit neglected, so August is going to be The Month of Lots of Baking. Today’s recipe for Chocolate & Peanut Butter Pretzel Tartlets is actually one of my all-time favorite desserts from Emily Hilliard at Nothing in the House (Have you been there yet? Go there. Seriously. You’ll never want to leave). I've made it a few times over the past couple of years, and it's never not been a home run. This simple tart is filled with creamy peanut butter swirled into rich chocolate ganache, and the crust is packed with pretzels. So you’ve got your sweet meeting your salty, your creamy meeting your crunchy, and good luck putting down that fork. At this point I should confess that I’ve never actually gotten to the point of using a fork with this tart because whenever it’s in the house, my impulse for immediate gratification becomes overpowering and I go at it bare handed. But you get the idea. 

Now I know it’s summer, which means peaches are in season along with myriad other fresh ingredients. However, a few days ago, I went to sleep on July 31, and something terrible happened overnight.  August reared its ugly head, and the inevitable end of summer vacation began looming in a very real and ominous way on my mental horizon. In such a bleak state of affairs, I didn’t need fruit, I needed comfort food – so here we are.

Like I said before, this is not a new recipe; I’ve made it a handful of times in the past, but this time I made a deliberate decision to be more liberal with my application of butter, and this was a good choice.

For instance, I used a good half of this stick of butter on the six waiting tart dishes along with a light dusting of flour. Not only did it make removing the tarts from their dishes a painless process, but I feel confident that the flavor of the crust was improved slightly as well.

Here’s my dough ball, comprised half of flour and half of crushed pretzels; it turned out to be a nice mix of sweet and salty. In the past I’d used a rolling pin to crush my pretzels by hand, but this time around I used the food processor, which turned out to give me a better consistency for the crust. While you can see that a few chunks of pretzel remained, which was good for flavor and texture, the finer pretzel powder seemed to help the dough hold together better overall.

Unlike other, stressful tart crust experiences, this one behaved impeccably as I rolled it out between two sheets of plastic wrap. I think the recipe called for waxed paper here, but I like to be able to see exactly how my crust is holding up, so I went with a more transparent alternative.

Once the dough was about 15 inches in diameter, I cut out circles using my trusty martini glass (the circumference of which makes the perfect mini-tart-dish-sized circle)  and pieced the crust into my waiting, (heavily buttered) dishes.

The original recipe makes a 12-inch tart, so I had more than enough dough. If I’d had more tart dishes I could have gotten at least two more crusts.

Here’s the next moment of extra-buttery goodness in this recipe. For the first 20 minutes they’re in the oven, the crusts need to be covered with aluminum foil that’s been buttered on the underside.  I promise, you guys, there are few little things in life more subtly satisfying than smearing soft lumps of butter over a smooth surface. I especially recommend foregoing the spatula and using your hands.

After my crusts were baked and cooled, preparing the ganache was a simple “heat the cream, pour it over your really tasty Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips, wait 5 minutes, whisk, and keep lovin’ life” kind of thing. The peanut butter just needed to be warmed a little to melt. Pour your warm, gooey fillings into your crusts, swirl around, and voilà: dessert to die for.

These tarts taste just like my favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor, Chubby Hubby. This ice cream was also our go-to snack in college when my roommates and I needed some emergency stress reduction via food therapy, so no wonder I started craving it the morning after having my first school-related anxiety dream (wherein I found myself in front of a classroom of first graders, I was late to a student government meeting, and a tornado raged outside the window – yikes). So I’m going to take a step back, take a few deep breaths, and savor the last weeks of summer while I work my way through a few of these bad boys. 

Post Script: Part of me does feel a little guilty for neglecting summer fruit season though, so check back soon for some peach-inspired, herby-spicy goodness.