A few weeks ago I said I would put my hand to chocolate and beetroot brownies and I finally got round to making them today. I adore spending a Sunday in the kitchen experimenting and trying new recipes and that’s exactly what I got up to today. I made these brownies and then a gorgeous mild curry which I’ll blog about during the week.

Now I have mentioned before that I’m not much of a baker and a few of my gluten free attempts at baked goods have failed miserably but these turned out perfectly. To guide me on my way I used the basis of this recipe by James from the Great British Bake Off. I wanted to make these brownies a little less indulgent so I tweaked the recipe slightly and added beetroot.

To make these delicious brownies you will need:

250g Half Fat Butter

3 eggs

250g of Dark Chocolate (I used 70% cocoa)

3 tsp of vanilla extract

75g of Self Raising Gluten-Free Flour

60g cocoa powder

300g of fresh cooked beetroot, cut in to small chunks

Begin by lining a small deep oven dish and preheat your oven to 160C

Melt the butter and chocolate together, either in a bain-marie or in the microwave. I used the microwave and cooked for 1 minute, stirred and cooked for another minute, the chocolate had melted by this point.

Using my chopper attachment I was able to get the beetroot rather fine but if you don’t have a blender/food processor you could grate the beetroot finely (make sure you wear gloves and beetroot dye is a pain to get off). I then whisked my eggs and vanilla extract using my electric whisk attachment for about two minutes. After years of using good aul fashioned elbow grease this was such a treat to my poor arm. I wanted to keep this recipe low on sugar so instead of using the caster sugar the original recipe called for, I just added extra vanilla extract. I was apprehensive about this but the brownies tasted just as sweet as sugary ones.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder as the chocolate/butter mix cools slightly. Add the chocolate to the eggs, quickly whisking, then fold in the beetroot. Finally, carefully fold in the flour and the cocoa to the mixture. Once this is done you can pour in to your oven dish and cook for about 40 minutes.

Leave to cool and then cut. Due to the deepness of the dish I cut these brownies quite small, getting 15 out of the small oven tray. I’ve already had two and I’m super stuffed and don’t think I can manage any for dessert.

I’m pretty darn pleased with these, its restored my faith in gluten free baking but to be honest it was probably the original recipe that helped perfect them. Maybe I’ll try my hand and more tray bakes next weekend.

Dom