Now both these delightful ladies bake a damn good cake, and I have cook books from both nestling on my shelves so there was little to choose between the two of them - the major difference (other than the lack of icing) was that whilst Diana's is made in the buttercream method with the addition of grated beetroot, Jill's is made with pureed beetroot and oil. My friend and discussed the possible merits of both - whilst we agreed that with a carrot cake you normally have an oil based recipe, but to go with it you normally have grated carrot too. As this was to be a celebration cake, I had always intended to use some form of icing, but we agreed that we could do this with either version of the cake, so that didn't make it much simpler either. With only a week before I needed to bake the cake, I didn't think I had time to make both prior to the event to see which worked best, but this is when my friend suggested, that as she had a dinner guest that weekend, she could make one, if I could find time to do the other - so a plan was hatched. I went with Diana and her icing, she went with Jill and her puree. Both of us served them to guests that weekend and everyone liked them, but that didn't totally answer the question of which to do again for the 40th celebrations so we had a "cake comparision" as an afternoon snack that Monday at work with a slice of each and a not very scientific tasting approach.....
We still like both cakes, neither one came out better than the other, but there was a winner in terms of which to recreate, purely and simply on the basis that Jill's recipe does not work with icing. That recipe produces a very smooth, very moist cake, which when served slightly warm with ice-cream creates a perfect after dinner dessert. The cake has a gorgeous rich purple hue to the brown of the chocolate too and is a really good way to hide some veg in something for the child who is a very fussy eater as they would never detect any bits to remove!
Diana's cake by contrast is a little dryer in texture (butter not oil based) and has a higher percentage of chocolate as it has both molten dark and cocoa powder (Jill's recipe is only cocoa based) so a denser chocolate flavour (too chocolaty for some actually - it is very rich and you can only eat a very small slice) but the sour cream/chocolate/casis icing adds the moisture back in and the tang complements the rich cake nicely. The grated beetroot leaves behind less purple to the cake colour, but more bits for those with a suspicious nature to find and discard.... On the second baking I slightly tweaked the icing from the original recipe as I found it too sweet the first time round and I have a very sweet tooth - my adapted recipe is below. I also split the cake as I prefer to sandwich the two halves back together with some of the icing and find this works better in my oven but each to their own. Pictures of the second cake are below - next time, when we now from the offset that we're blogging the experiment (we only decided to do it at the tasting and by then there was little left to photograph!) we'll have more pictures for you.
Adapted from Diana Henry's Original Recipe in the Telegraph in January 2010
250g (9oz) cooked beetroot
75g (2¾oz) dark chocolate, broken into pieces
125g (4½oz) butter, softened
300g (10½oz) soft light-brown sugar
3 large eggs
50g (1¾oz) cocoa
powder, sifted
225g (8oz) self-raising flour, sifted
¼ tsp salt
For the icing
150g (5½oz) good-quality plain chocolate, broken into small pieces
140ml (5fl oz) creme fraiche
4 tbsp icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
1 tbsp crème de cassis
Grate the beetroot quite coarsely (I used ready cooked but unpickled vacuum packed beetroot).
Put the chocolate into a bowl set over a pan of simmering water and melt.
Put the butter, sugar and eggs in a mixer and beat until light and pale.
Add the melted chocolate then fold in the cocoa powder, flour and salt.
Finally, stir in the beetroot.
Pour the batter into two greased cake tin measuring 20-23cm (8-9in) and cook in an oven preheated to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4 for 15 - 25 minutes. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Turn on to a wire rack to cool.
To make the icing, melt the chocolate (over a pan of boiling water or carefully in the microwave)
Add the creme fraiche to a mixing bowl and add the icing sugar and cocoa, begin to mix slowly, then add the melted chocolate. Continue to whisk on high speed until the mixture thickens and the colour goes 4 or 5 shades paler.
Add the casis, whisk again then sandwich and cover the cake with the mixture.
Serve with cream or cream fraiche.
If you have a recipe for us to trial - please let us know - we hope you'll follow our monthly experiments and hope the guys in the office enjoy the tastings ;-)
