LIQUORICE, BEETROOT AND CHOCOLATE CAKE

Prep time: 30 minutes Cook time: 40 minutes, plus cooling time

Serves 8-10

Hands down, this has been the birthday cake of choice for many a year in our house. The beetroot is undetectable in this recipe, but what it brings is an earthy sweetness and it contributes beautifully to the finished texture of the chocolate cake. In truth though, this is also the easiest cake you will ever make, simply combining wet ingredients into dry. The liquorice spiders were my youngest daughter Dot’s idea – she’s a fan of the Liquorice Allsort. Her big sister Ivy was around to enact her wishes and was under strict instruction to give each spider proper spidery fangs.

INGREDIENTS

– 200ml sunflower oil,

plus extra for greasing – 100g rice flour

– 100g ground almonds (or use fine or medium oats to be nut-free)

– 1 tsp bicarbonate of

soda

– 75g cocoa powder – 250g caster sugar – contents of 3 liquorice

tea bags

– 250g cooked and peeled beetroot (vac-packed is great, about 4 small ones; keep the juice left in the bag to make the icing) –3eggs

– around 100g icing

sugar, to decorate – liquorice to decorate, such as shoelaces for the legs and web and soft chewy liquorice rounds for the spiders’ abdomens

METHOD Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with baking parchment.

Mix the rice flour, ground almonds, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa powder, sugar and the contents of the liquorice tea bags in a large bowl.

Blend the beetroot in a food processor or blender until completely smooth, then add the eggs one at a time, whizzing between each addition. Pour in the oil and process until smooth; it should be a beautiful shade of pink.

Add the wet beetroot mixture into the dry ingredients in the bowl and mix well.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean and the top of the cake is firm to touch.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then remove from the tin and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Use any beetroot juice left over from the packet and mix through with enough icing sugar to make the icing for the cake. I used about 1 tbsp beetroot juice and about 100g icing sugar, mixed well until the icing is the consistency to just drop from the back of a spoon.

With the cake cool, spoon over the icing and decorate with the liquorice as you choose.