Stories about all, that mean a lot

Passport & Plate - beet Cake

Brazil | Thursday, March 13, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
For the cake:
5 small/medium beets boiled until soft
One cup of oil (sunflower)
Two cups of brown sugar
1 table spoon of yeast
4 full eggs
2 cups of wheat flour

For the top:
4 table spoons of white sugar
8 table spoons of powder chocolate
1.5 table spoon of butter
8 table spoons of milk

 

How to prepare this recipe
Put the first 5 ingredients in a blender. Mix until you have a pink cream. Take that dough from the blender and gently mix it with the flour with a big spoon. Put that into a cake mold and in the preheated oven at around 180°C for about 30 minutes (depends on the oven). The test you can do is to put a fork or a toothpick in the cake. If comes out clean, without dough, it’s done.

Topping:
Cook everything, stirring, for 2 minutes after it comes to boil.

When the cake is done, poke holes in the top of the cake and pour the topping over it. Let it sit until it’s cold and voila! you have yourself a beet cake with chocolate topping!

 

The story behind this recipe
Well, the story behind this simple cake is a family story. My grandma (mom’s side) used to make beautiful cakes, those with three levels with perfectly decorated tops for weddings and big parties. Of course for a weekend at grandma’s house we always had “cuca”, a mix between basic cake with crumbs and fruits like banana. This is normal here in Brazil. Mixes are our brand. We are a mix. I’m Italian on my dad’s side, but my mom’s side is a mix of Italian, native Brazilian, and Spanish. From this you can see the mess / mix that is my kitchen. Well, I was the granddaughter who retained the skills, but my cakes are never beautiful, or at least controlled in a predictable way. Of course I learned how to “fix” the appearance of a cake, but sometimes I just made the cake for my family and I didn’t worry about appearances. I paid more attention to the mix of ingredients instead. I created my own versions of coffee cake, banana cake, and I made one with rum, too. But it was at a family reunion when my brother, eating one of my cakes, said: “Amazing! Your cakes are always ugly but delicious!” So in my family I have this reputation: if my cake is beautiful, people are suspicious it isn’t good enough… but if it’s really ugly, it’s always the best thing on the table. My boyfriend said it’s a good idea for a bakery name: Nivea’s Ugly Cakes.
Well, here in Brazil we have a very common cake recipe with carrots. Every mom cooks that for the kids. And the cake always turns yellow because of the carrots inside. One day, thinking of my toddler niece and her pink world, and the problem of her not eating veggies, I experimented with beets and the cake turned pink. She loved it, because she said it’s a girl’s cake and it’s become a family standard ever since. Every party that I cook for, or even just to have coffee in the middle of a rainy day, people ask if my cake is “ugly” enough to come and eat. Well, that is it. My recipe is an ugly and lovely pink cake made from beets.