Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake is a dense chocolate cake made with beetroot, which gives it a fantastic red colour and natural sweetness. The added beetroot merely lends it vivid redness, and doesn’t influence the chocolatey taste.

This cake has been made in a heart-shaped tin (for that little romantic touch), and layered with cool and creamy crème fraiche.

Our Red Velvet cake is not too heavy, and is the perfect dessert to share with your loved ones!

Organic Raw Cacao Powder 500g (Sussex Wholefoods)

50g cacao powder

Xylitol 1kg (Sussex Wholefoods)

150g Xylitol

Pure Vanilla Extract 60ml (Nielsen Massey)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Beetroot Powder 50g (Hampshire Foods)

50g beetroot powder

100% Wholemeal Plain Flour 1kg, Organic (Doves Farm)

150g wholemeal flour

Gluten-Free Baking Powder 250g (Sussex Wholefoods)

2 tsp baking powder

Other Ingredients

3 eggs
4 tbsp Greek yoghurt
1 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
150g unsalted butter, softened

Method

1) Pre heat the oven to 170C/325F/gas 3. Grease and line a deep, round 15cm/6in tin.
2) Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla together in a bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition (if the mixture looks curdled add a spoonful of the flour).
3) Mix the yoghurt with the beetroot powder – it will look very purple/red at this stage (the mixture will fade once cooked). Beat the coloured yoghurt into the cake mixture.
4) Fold in the remaining flour, baking powder and cacao powder, followed by the milk until well combined. Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour. Test whether the mixture has cooked by inserting a skewer into the cake and seeing whether it comes out clean.
5) Remove the cake from the tin and leave to cool for five minutes, and then place onto a cooling rack and set aside to cool completely.
6) Once cool, decorate with Crème Fraiche or a topping of your choice and serve!

NB. We divided our cake mixture into two small heart-shaped silicone moulds and a medium size cake tin. Feel free to divide into different sized cake tins and adjust cooking times accordingly. With our smaller cakes, the cooking time was only around 30 minutes.