Spiced Beetroot, Walnut and Date cake

• Line a baking cake tin with parchment at the base and preheat oven to 200C / 400F. You can find my favourite parchment here.
• Peel your beets and then weigh (i used one medium, 2 smallish ones for 300g to give you a buying idea)
• Grate the beets
• Place flours, eggs, spices, salt, coconut milk, bi carb soda and baking powder in a big bowl. Mix with an electric beater on medium  (hand held or kitchen aid)
• Then rough chop the walnuts and fold them and the desiccated coconut into the mix.
• Pour all into a baking tin of 22cm squared with a square of parchment at the bottom for easy extraction.
• Bake on 200C or 400F for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until skewer comes out clean as a whistle.

Thermomix note:

• Grate beets in TM for 5 seconds, speed 6 Then add everything except nuts and coconut and do 10 seconds, speed 5 Give everything a bit of a scrape down and gig with the spatula. Then add nuts and mix 10 seconds, speed 4

Nut Free

• Just leave out the walnuts and double the desiccated coconut. Also use coconut oil in place of the macadamia oil.

Variation

• Do half half carrot or 100% carrot swap for a change. Half zucchini / half carrot is great too, just be sure to wring out your grated zucchini in a tea towel first to not water log the cake!

For Whipped Coconut Cream Topping

• Take 2 cans of coconut cream from the fridge and just scoop out the solid half that’s risen to the top of the can from the chilling. Overnight will give you best result. I always leave a couple of cans in the fridge for this reason. You never, ever know when faux cream cheese icing is going to be an emergency!
• Then, whip them on high until thickened even more. For this one I didn’t want it uber thick so I poured a little of the coconut water in too, but just literally 20-30ml.
• Add the vanilla bean powder, juice of lime or lemon and the maple or rice syrup,
• Whip with beaters another 5 seconds until all incorporated et voila. Your icing / thick serving cream is done.
• Lather over the cake liberally and garnish with a little fresh citrus zest OR place in a serving bowl for people to spoon GENEROUSLY (trust me on that tip!) over their slice when served.
• You can store this coconut whipped cream in the fridge, covered, for a week. If it gets greyed on top, simply scrape that layer away and use what’s still delicious underneath! You could even eat this for breakfast, it’s so healthy and nourishing. Imagine that: A green flag for breakfast cake!