Valentine's Chocolate and Beetroot Cake Heart Shaped Bundt

Nordicware's heart-shaped bundt tin is the perfect choice for your Valentine's baking! I got it as a Christmas present and knew I had to use it to make a cake for Valentine's day, and that cake had to be chocolate. Then, I saw that two of my favourite blog challenges - Random Recipes and We Should Cocoa - had joined forces this month. Dom at Belleau Kitchen, who hosts RR, and Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog, the creator of WSC, decided that we should choose one of our recipe books at random, turn to the chocolate section and make one of those recipes. The book I chose at random was the Clandestine Cake Club cookery book, and the recipe I chose was for a chocolate and beetroot cake. I adapted it a little; I used ready cooked beetroot which came vacuum packed, as it was quicker to cook than raw beetroot. I also used slightly less beetroot than the recipe called for, since I only bought one pack and wanted to use a little of it for another recipe, and I missed out the coffee as I didn't think the cake needed the additional flavour and I don't really like coffee. Also, I left out the red food colouring that is used in the cake, as I wanted the cake to be chocolate coloured but with red or pink icing, and I didn't make the candied beetroot to go on top, as I had some cute chocolate hearts from Dr. Oetker that I wanted to try out.

This is the heart-shaped bundt tin; you can make this cake in any shape bakeware of course

 You need:
250g plain chocolate
3 eggs
250g light brown sugar
4 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp vanilla flavouring
80g plain flour
50g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
25g cocoa powder
175g ready-to-eat beetroot, grated
50ml sunflower oil
Icing sugar and pink or red food colouring for decorating

Preheat the oven to 180C. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or the microwave.

Beat the eggs, sugar, honey and vanilla until light and fluffy.

Fold in the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and cocoa.

Fold in the melted chocolate and grated beetroot and then the sunflower oil.

Grease and line your cake tin; I sprayed the tin with PME Cake Release.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour. How long it takes to bake will depend on the size of your tin; the bundt tin is not that wide but is fairly deep so it takes longer for the cake to cook, and as you can see it's very easy for it to start to burn on top! If this happens you can cover the tin with foil for the last part of the cooking time. 

Allow the cake to cool in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack. The chocolate, cocoa and beetroot combine to make a very dark, fudgy cake - I promise this isn't burnt!

I decided to make pink icing to drizzle over the top so I mixed icing sugar with water and a little Sugarflair pink gel colour. I put some kitchen paper under the cake as I knew it would be messy!

I was sent these chocolate hearts by Dr. Oetker which are really cute - and taste great too! Just because they are small decorations doesn't mean they shouldn't be good quality chocolate.

I placed a heart on each groove in the cake.

I also bought a heart-shaped cake board from a new cake shop near where I live, which I thought would be perfect for this cake.

 And here it is!

Side view with a better view of the chocolate hearts. Of course, you can decorate this cake however you like.

Unsurprisingly, there are several Valentine's-themed blog challenges this month that this recipe is perfect for. Firstly, Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel at Dollybakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme is l'amour. (That's love, for non-French speakers!)

Beetroot is in season in February so I am sending this to Ren Behan's challenge Simple and In Season.

As already mentioned, I chose this recipe to fit in with a double blog challenge, We Should Cocoa hosted by Chocolate Log Blog and Random Recipes at Belleau Kitchen.

The theme for this month's Tea Time Treats is chocolate; the challenge is hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Janie at The Hedgecombers.

I'm also sharing this with Four Seasons Food, hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg. The theme this month is "food from the heart".

 Michelle at Utterly Scrummy and Helen at Fuss Free Flavours have a great blog challenge called Extra Veg where the idea is to blog about any recipe where you have an extra portion of veg - in this case, beetroot in the cake!

Finally a new challenge, Love Cake, hosted by Jibber Jabber. Rose-shaped cakes are certainly evocative of love and passion - the theme this month is baking with passion.