roasted beetroots Archives - The White Ramekins

With the weather getting warmer day by day, I have started hankering more on to light and refreshing foods. I have been eating fresh fruits and salads all throughout the day. Yeah you got that right, I am trying to be more disciplined, while it comes to packing multiple tiffins full of multiple kind of fresh fruits and nuts. This has lasted for 3 weeks now, and I am glad and pretty confident that I’ll continue this for the entire summer this year. Sounds like a new year resolution, which we all know, have got their own unknown fates…ha?

Yeah, it might sound like that, but I’ll try to stick around as much as I can. And that is why, I have been buying a lot of fruits and veggies for salads these days and keep my stock full. Oranges and beetroots have stayed for longer this year. We are still getting fresh and lovely produce. This is a salad recipe which I created out of leftover oranges and beetroots on a Sunday afternoon, when I was done with my Ciabatta baking project {recipe coming soon}.

That rustic bread baking took almost my entire weekend, but I was happy with the results, though I was tired of cooking something else. So, I threw in some whole beetroots in oven to let them roast and cool. I sliced some oranges and jazzed up the salad with a handful of fresh mint leaves.

To added the saltiness, I added some feta cheese and some nuts for the crunch and wrapped up this healthy extravaganza with a honey chili vinaigrette. The flavors came around so well, it was one of a super simple and refreshing salad and nonetheless incredible. I ate some of the leftover salad from the fridge in the evening, and I think it tastes better while cold. Definitely a keeper for those hot summer days!

Ingredients

4 small beetroots
2 oranges
handful of fresh mint leaves
40 gm feta
1/4 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup clear honey
4 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp chili pepper flakes
salt to taste

Directions

Wash and wrap the beetroots in aluminium foil and roast for 25 minutes in a 230 degree preheated oven.
Let beetroot cool wrapped in foil.
Meanwhile, make the dressing, by mixing olive oil, honey, vinegar, chili flakes and salt in a bowl. Keep aside.
When beetroots are cooled enough to handle, peel their skin and slice into flat discs and layer in the serving platter
Peel and slice the oranges and layer on top of beets. Sprinkle with mint leaves, feta and chopped nuts.
Drizzle the dressing over the salad and or serve by the side.

Baking a beetroot cake had been on my mind for a long time, almost right from the winter started. But a little clumsiness and frequent re-prioritizing habit of mine kept me away from this lovely cake.

I love baking with fruits and vegetables. Not just they give a depth to the basic flavor of vanilla or chocolate, but they keep them well moist for long enough. It’s a different thing that they don’t last long.

And when I saw Daring Baker’s challenge for this month, I reassured to myself that this time, it has to take priority and there’s noway I am going to miss the challenge this month. Truly speaking, it was easy for me this time, as I knew the recipe already and my half of the job was done.

Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!!

It was Nigella Lawson’s dark chocolate cake with beets, which I fell in love with because of it’s dark, moorish character. Dark and earthy flavor gets mellowed down with a bit of roasting the beets in the oven. Add them to the chocolate cake batter and you help the chocolate cake to accentuate the dark flavor. I am sure you must have got the idea by now, what I am talking about. Nigella’s recipe uses corn oil, which I replaced with my obedient extra virgin olive oil, all because I didn’t have corn oil at hand. It also suggests to frost the cake with chocolate ganache, which I didn’t feel the need of.

Ingredients

175 gm plain flour
2 tbsp baking powder
75 gm cocoa powder
225 gm caster sugar
3 eggs
225 gm raw beetroot
200 ml extra virgin or light olive oil

Instructions

Preheat the oven at 250 degree Celsius. Wash the beetroots and wrap them individually in aluminium foil and place them in oven for about 25 minutes.
Let beetroots cool down to room temperature. Once good to handle, peel the beets and puree them in a food processor/liquidizer/blender.
Preheat the oven to 190 degree Celsius and prepare a 8 inch spring form baking pan.
Sift the flour, baking powder, caster sugar and cocoa powder together in a bowl and keep aside.
In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, oil and beetroot puree.
Fold the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
Let the cake cool completely on a wire rack.

Roasted Beetroot & Orange Salad

Beetroot Chocolate Olive Oil Cake