I found the recipe for this cake on one of my favorite baking blogs, Joy the Baker.  She takes stunning photographs of her food and makes everything look so simple and elegant.    Last month she blogged about a beautiful cake with a secret ingredient: BEETS!  Just take a look at her photos of this cake! The beets gave her cake a deep purple color, and the frosting is hot pink.  Dwight Schrute would be so proud!

I happened to have some local, organic beets in my refrigerator from my latest Door to Door order, plus, it was my Mom’s birthday!

Beets+Birthday=Birthday Beet Cake.

I felt like such a professional, mixing this up from scratch and following the directions to the absolute letter. I even used a real vanilla bean to flavor the frosting.  Only something went wrong. Instead of acquiring the fuchsia hue of the beets, the cake and frosting stayed the same boring brown and white colors.  After some head scratching and googling, I figured out that my beets weren’t the common red variety; they were GOLDEN BEETS!  Apparently golden beets, at least these golden beets, don’t dye foods like the other beets.

My Mom was able to guess the secret ingredient after a few bites.

“Yes!” I said, “Beets! Can you believe it?”

At the same time, Mom and Dad said, “Why did you do that?”

I guess it would have had a more dramatic effect if the beets had done their job. It still tasted delicious, and I would recommend this recipe to anyone. Just make sure you have some red beets on hand.

Roast the beets for 4o minutes. They don't look very appetizing, but they tasted just fine when peeled, shredded, and added to mass amounts of sugar, flour and butter.

Peel and shred those beets. Oooh how orange! This was my first clue that something was awry.

THAT was a rewarding feeling. The parchment paper worked.

I used a real vanilla bean. See those little specks? Delicious!

I cut a heart out of parchment paper and used it for a stencil.

Ta da! See the orange specks? Good job, golden beets!