I made a beet cupcake.

And it's vegan.

And people ate it.

And people liked it.

... you should applaud now. 

Here is the second instalment in my series of three attempts to inject more goodness {translation: veggies} into some baked goods. My mom-guilt dial drops a few points when I know at least Little is scoring some serious folate & manganese as he reaches for a second. (and if you can tell me why we need manganese that would be very helpful)

A favourite comedian of mine said it best when he delivered a joke that went something like this...' "it would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach.  Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there, and the carrot would say, "It's cool, he's with me."'

That's kind of what I was going for with the beet and the cupcake.   The vegan thing was just a bonus.  These cupcakes were a cross between a brownie and a cake. Not too dense, but light and airy.  They don't even need the icing (sifting a little icing sugar and cocoa together would be a nice finish) but if you do decide to try the icing, save a tablespoon or so of the beet juice from roasting them to tint the frosting. (or cranberry, blueberry juice etc all work great)  There is very little sugar, and as I mentioned above - bonus, vegan.

So if you have some beets lying around (ideally not on a white couch) and you don't want to make this gorgeous soup or these cute chips, then make your Valentine some cupcakes...

... and maybe don't mention the beets.

Just a Chocolate Cupcake {with beets}

Author: sixtyone45.com

Ingredients

• 2 medium beets, roasted (or 3/4 of a cup pureed/shredded)
• 1 cup almond milk (vanilla, unsweetened)
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 1 Tbsp melted coconut oil
• 3 Tbsp applesauce
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 pinches of salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with muffin cups.
2. Wash and trim beats. Cut into quarters and wrap in tin foil and place on baking sheet. Roast for about one hour. They should be tender to a fork poke when they are ready. Remove from oven and unwrap foil. (At this point you can reserve the juice for colouring any icing if you wish) Dump into a food processor or blender and let cool.
3. Reduce oven to 350 degrees.
4. In a large bowl, pour the almond milk and vinegar. Let stand about five minutes to curdle the milk. Whisk in brown sugar, orange zest, coconut oil, applesauce, vanilla. Whisk until well combined and slightly foamy. Then add the cooled beets, stir to combine.
5. Add the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt to a sifter or mesh sieve and gradually sift (or shake) the dry ingredients into the wet, stopping on occasion to slowly gently combine. Mix until there are no longer any lumps.
6. Scoop or pour the batter into the liners, filling the cups about 3/4 of the way. Bake 20 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.
7. Let cool completely and enjoy!

Notes

As we are not a vegan household (and we are lovers of icing), we chose to add a cream cheese topping to these cupcakes. I mix cream cheese with icing sugar - adjusting to the desired sweetness level. In this recipe I tinted the icing with beet juice but you could also use blueberry or pomegranate juice.

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