Sweet - Cakes - Chocolate Beet Cake (with Strawberries on Top)

This was my first adventure into the mysterious realm of Cakes. I desperately needed to make a birthday gift, you see, and I oh-so-originally came up with cake! Everybody loves cake, am I right? I'd been at a friend's party the week before and she'd served this wonderful mouth-wateringly moist creation of chocolaty goodness, so I figured that's the cake I had to try - with strawberries on top, as per the birthday boy's oblivious instructions. So I begged my friend for the recipe she'd used and she referred me to this site. I gotta say, my first thought was "you put WHAT into the chocolate?"  But I couldn't deny that it had been good, so I gave it a try. The result:

Was pretty good, though I admit, I messed this one up a bit. I completely botched the beets because they count as "real food" in my world - not desserts - and thus something was bound to go wrong. Still, even though it turned out a bit dry, I really want to try this recipe again (and do it right next time!), and thus it's made its way here.

Ingredients (straight from the site):
Cake:
5 medium beets
2 oz unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup cocoa powder + a pinch for dusting
2 sticks (1 cup) butter at room temperature
1.5 cups dark brown sugar
3 eggs
1 vanilla bean
2 tbsp Bourbon (I think I used cognac, which was very yummy. I'm sure you can replace with rum as well)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Ganache:
5 oz semisweet/dark chocolate
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp honey, corn syrup, golden syrup, or something similar
alcohol of choice, amount of choice (not to exceed a few tbsp's otherwise ganache will be too runny)
    -I macerated a few cut-up strawberries in 1/4 cup cognac and a sprinkling of sugar for a few hrs

*for (super easy) recipe, please see my chocolate ganache recipe

To Make (and Bake):
about 1.5-2 hrs

First off, the beets. To bake them, you want to individually wrap each one in aluminum foil (NOT cut them in half and place on the tray, as I did, because then they'll take ages to bake and dry up like crazy. Live and learn, I s'pose, eh?) and put them on a baking tray. Preheat the oven to 400F and roast for however long you need - usually between 20 mins to 1 hour (I know, that's a crazy range of time, sorry). Just be sure to check on them every 10-20 mins. If they look dry, you can dribble about 1 tsp of water on them and continue baking. They're done when the skin peels (slides) off easily, and skewers or forks can be inserted into the center of the beets very easily. If you want more instructions, this page looks to be fairly good. Or you can Google it, because that's how things get done. Regardless, once done baking, peel the beets and set aside to cool.

Reduce oven down to 350F, and line 2 pans with parchment paper, grease a bit, and dust a little bit of cocoa powder around the bottom.

In a large bowl you want to mix the butter and sugar until it's creamy, and then add eggs (1 at a time), vanilla and alcohol of preference.

In another bowl you want to mix the flour, baking soda and salt.

Once your beets are cool, bust out your blender, and blend the beets, cocoa powder and unsweetened chocolate together into a giant glorious mess.

Then, gradually add the flour and beets to the butter mixture until everything is well combined (you can read the site for more detailed mixing techniques).

Divide the batter in 2 and bake about 20-25 mins, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (as usual).

Then let cool a bit, and top with the (now cooled) ganache! I also added some blueberries and strawberries dipped in chocolate (which is really just melted chocolate, not the ganache, because that doesn't thicken up enough at the end) in attempts to make it pretty, but that's entirely personal preference :) Good luck, and enjoy!