Chocolate, Beetroot & Raspberry Cupcakes Recipe

With Easter on the horizon, we can't help but embrace all things chocolate - or is that just in our house?!  With a hint to healthiness though, these delicious cupcakes also contain beetroot and raspberries, so that must make them one of you five a day surely!  And, would you believe, they're gluten-free too.  They can also be made with blackcurrants in place of the raspberries, then topped with swirls of chocolate butter cream icing with 2 teaspoons of cassis whisked in.


Ingredients

110 g caster sugar
30 g cocoa powder, sifted
55 g rice flour
25 g cornflour
2 tsp gluten-free baking powder
3 large eggs
110 g butter, softened
1 heaped tbsp blackcurrant jam
100 g beetroot, coarsely grated
75 g fresh raspberries

To decorate:

100 g good-quality dark chocolate, broken into bits
freeze-dried raspberry pieces and 3 fresh raspberries per cake

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Place 12 large cupcake cases in a 12-hole muffin tray.

2. Put the sugar, cocoa, rice flour, cornflour, baking powder, eggs and butter into a medium bowl, and beat until smooth.

3. Mix the jam with the beetroot, and stir into the cake batter.  Fold in the fresh raspberries.

4. Three-quarter fill the cupcake cases with the cake batter, and bake for 15–20 minutes until the cakes are well risen and feel springy in the centre. Cool on a wire rack.

5. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan half-filled with boiling water.  Using a teaspoon, drizzle the melted chocolate back and forth over the top of each cupcake.

6. Before the drizzled chocolate sets, sprinkle with dried raspberry pieces and arrange raspberries in the centre of each cake.

Alternatively: use blackcurrants in place of the raspberries, then top with swirls of chocolate butter cream icing with 2 teaspoons of cassis whisked in.



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