Beetroot red velvet cake
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Keletso Motau fired up the oven to make a red velvet cake with a secret ingredient: beetroot powder. Paired with cocoa, the beetroot makes for a beautifully tinted chocolate cake – no artificial colouring required!
Ingredients
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- 400 g caster sugar
- 6 6 free-range eggs, at room temperature
- 310 ml canola oil
- 2 T apple cider vinegar
- 4 t vanilla extract
- 1 cup buttermilk or amasi
- 400 g cake flour
- 2 t cocoa powder
- 2 t baking powder
- ½ t fine sea salt
- ⅓ cup Woolworths beetroot powder, plus extra for dusting
- For the icing:
- 230 g butter
- 500 g full-fat cream cheese
- 520 g icing sugar
- 1 t vanilla extract
Method
Ingredients![](https://taste.co.za/wp-content/themes/taste.co.za/img/details-arrow-up.jpeg)
1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC and grease 2 x 22 cm cake tins. In a large bowl, beat together the sugar, eggs and oil until light and fluffy. Gently mix in the vinegar, vanilla extract and buttermilk.
2. In a separate bowl, sift all the dry ingredients and whisk to combine. Add the egg mixture to the dry mix, then fold in.
3. Divide the cake mixture between the tins, and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool.
4. To make the icing, beat the butter and cream cheese together, slowly sifting in the icing sugar, until smooth. Add the vanilla and mix through.
5. To assemble, use half the icing to ice the top of one cake evenly, then sandwich the cakes together. Ice the top of the second layer with the remaining icing, then dust with beetroot powder.
Cook’s note: Amasi (or buttermilk) and oil maximise the moist factor. Ice with lashings of cream cheese icing – and bask in the glory!
Videography: Romy Wilson, Jan Ras
Photograph: Jan Ras
Production: Keletso Motau
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