Beetroot and Chocolate Brownie

Beetroot Brownie

This week there are two beetroot in the veg box, huge bigger than tennis balls and by some mistake we’ve doubled up on the weekly shop.  My mind immediately leaping to beetroot and chocolate as a way to cash in on the bonanza.  Beetroot adds a dense moist texture with a sweetness that means we can use a little less sugar.   This is great as a pudding served with a compote some ice cream or a spoon or two of Greek yoghurt.

Since buying a pressure cooking preparing beetroot has been a doddle.  We typically put it on the potato setting and add a little extra water.  If they are little bigger, they just need a little extra time, a nudge on the pressure dial and a couple of extra minutes. 

20×30 shallow baking tin, greased and lined with baking parchment

Oven at 180°c, 350°f or Gas Mark 4

  • Beetroot: 300g (cooked from fresh, to the point of being soft, peeled and finely grated)
  • Butter unsalted: 250g roughly cubed for melting
  • Dark chocolate: 300g broken into pieces
  • Eggs: 4
  • Caster Sugar: 250g
  • Wholemeal self-raising flour: 200g
  • Salt: a pinch of fine sea salt

Melt the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. As soon as it starts to soften, reduce the heat and add the butter.  Stir until it has melted.

Meanwhile beat the eggs and sugar together within an inch of their lives, a good five to ten mins depending on the speed of the beater.  Looking for pale light and fluffy, doubled in volume.

With the beater on slow, add the melted chocolate mix into the eggs, just looking to combine the two.  Sift the flour and salt together over the chocolate.  Adding the wheat grains back in.  Gently fold this in and when it’s nearly combined fold in the grated beetroot as well.  Don’t overwork this as we are trying to keep the air in the mixture.

Scoop the mixture into the lined tin and bake for 25-30 minutes, remember this will carry on cooking when you take out the oven and we want them to stay moist. 

Leave to cool in its tin on a wire rack, before cutting into squares.

No lie in

We both woke at alarm time this morning without the alarm! It’s like a law of physics, when you don’t need to get up you can’t sleep and then when you do need to get up you can’t.   If it had been a school day we’d have been flat out.  Both in need of that extra hour to refresh.  It’s elusive and for no reason.

We decide to get up and make the best of the dry morning the rain is due around 11, in search of a second coffee perhaps something to go alongside.  We end up at old haunt, nothing taking our fancy on the way.  Soderberg, a Swedish bakery and we know we won’t be disappointed from an eats point of view.  The coffee is good just not big enough.  The service slow, it’s ok there is no rush today.

We swung by the bookshop, I was hoping to check out the new book by Anja Dunk, Advent.  Unfortunately not in stock.  I was also hoping to pick up some wheat gluten, which I’d checked on line to see if the store sold it.  Again though not in stock.  So not very successful.  Then the rain came, with a howling wind to the bite we didn’t hang around.

Back home pre lunch is unusual on a Saturday and I as watch the leaves dance on the wind, the rain at a diagonal with the wind crashing against the windows I’m glad I can stay in the rest of the day.

Dinner this evening is already in the bag, I made a slow cook aubergine and lamb stew Thursday evening so I’m hunting around for a dessert to perhaps fill my time.  The trouble is it will come with a bout of guilt.  There is a tub of sour cream in the fridge crying out to be used and I’m wondering about a cheesecake recipe and wondering if I’d be able to freeze half.  I feel I’ve left it too late in terms of cooling down.  The veg box came with a couple of beetroots almost the size of foot balls so I feel a chocolate beetroot combo might be the way to go.


The #WeekendCoffeeShare is an informal weekly link-up hosted by Natalie the Explorer that serves as weekly heart beat and sort of of a mind-dump. Helps me reflect on my week, with a list of achievements, thoughts and rambles normally whilst drinking a beverage probably listening to music.

Cold Brisk Walk

At about nine last night as we were sitting down for our hour of TV for bed a moment fo dread came over me as I realised I’d not been out all day.  Caught up in work, my thoughts and organising I’d failed to make sure my eyes saw something more than four walls.

Woke in the middle of the night a frequent occurrence, probably related to my lack of external light intake and the whirring in my brain.  I flipped on the radio to help and came across a great little programme on food and the small changes we can make.

One small changeThe Food Chain Your stories of small, achievable changes around food to help the environment.

BBC Sounds – World Service

Thankfully this morning I’m able to make light a priority, a dry morning, crisp and cold.  The cars covered in what looks to be the regular arrival of the frost for the season.  I made it up Blackford Hill, catching the sun as it arrived for the day.  A good round trip of forty or so minutes and I’m feeling better for it.

Right here is…

Keyboard and Fork

I’ve got the words of Debbie Allen in my head as she plays Lydia Gray in Fame….’right here is where you start paying; in sweat.’ …..it plays out as I think about NanoPoblamo21..and the whole post a blog entry every day and I think about the goal to pull a cookbook together, it’s a dream, so I need to start the work and get on with it!

More a reflective ramble  as I try to get back into the habit of writing daily.  I’ve been skirting around the edges for a few days, perhaps weeks if I think about it honestly.  I already feel like I’ve lost the month despite it only being the 3rd.  The things I’ve written never whole in nature.  I dabble with my thinking in OneNote and then share as and when required.   The ideas have been building up and I really want to start shaping the structure of these thoughts.

I also dabbled on Facebook today with a page to share posts on moving forward Scribble & Scran on Facebook, think it needs a few likes to make it real.

One recipe to Rule them all

One Stock A Hundred Soups

Came across this book on my travels over the weekend, kind of aligned to some of my thinking on a couple of recipe spreads.  My thinking that from the basis of an onion you have the foundation for a great many things.  Soup, stews and curries.

This book has the premise that from one stock you have the basis for a number of soups.  On deeper reading, a cup of coffee in hand.  I can see the quantities jump around and the stock is more a pre-requisite to the different recipe.  My thinking is a little different in that the onion will be part and parcel of the recipe…..no discards. Not that I won’t give the recipes a go in this book and learn.

Onion, 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery and away we go….