Beetroot & chocolate muffins

I am chasing my recent enthusiasm for beetroot, so last week I tried a beetroot gratin at restaurant Konstam in London* that turned out to be delicious: slightly smokey in flavour, it seemed to consist of thinly sliced beetroot, red onion and cream.


And this weekend I tried beetroot and chocolate muffins. Well, it was really beetroot and cocoa. Found a few recipes online that all resembled each other (i.e. BBC, Delia) but had to adapt as I did not have any corn oil.







So, for 10 muffins I used:

• 300 gr flour
• 75 gr cocoa
• 4 tsp yeast
• 1 pinch salt
• 3 eggs, whisked
• 125 ml extravirgin olive oil
• 250 ml double cream
• 100 gr caster sugar
• 300 gr beetroot steamed until tender, peeled and mashed
• vanilla qb

cooked 35 mins on gas 6.

My husband seemed to like them (he wrote me an email this morning just to say!) but I am not completely convinced. Tomorrow I will try another one :). Somehow I believe it would taste better if I used chocolate chunks instead of cocoa powder - I'll try next time.

It's almost time to sow both beetroot and aubergines - in the meantime, to keep the recipe fresh in my mind, tomorrow I will cook again my Bloody Good Pasta. Why not, I will try to improvise a gratin next time. And, should I ever ran out of beetroot recipes, I have found a website that seems to have quite a few, interesting ones!

Notes:
* If you were looking for the place, you won't find it any more: one thing that drives me nuts since I move to the UK, all the decent food places, locally sourced and organic, close down within the year... there is something wrong with the food-scape here... :(