Ask a Chef reveals the secrets of those superb dishes you ate in cafes and restaurants and wanted to try yourself.
Ironic's chocolate beetroot salted caramel cake
For the cake
5 eggs
2½ cups caster sugar
300ml canola oil
250g dark chocolate
2 cups flour
1 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
100ml milk
1 cup grated raw beetroot
For the salted caramel
1½ cups caster sugar (and water)
300ml cream
½-1 tsp salt or to taste
For the ganache
1½ cups cream
600g dark chocolate broken into pieces
Method
To make the cake, beat eggs and caster sugar until pale and creamy and tripled in volume. Slowly drizzle in the canola oil and combine.
Melt the dark chocolate and add to the egg and oil mixture. Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder and fold in alternately with the milk. Fold the beetroot into the cake mixture.
Spray and line three 25cm cake tins and bake at 160degC for 20 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
To make the caramel, put the sugar in a saucepan and just cover with water so it is the consistency of wet sand. Bring to the boil but do not stir. Boil until the liquid turns amber.
Meanwhile, heat the cream to boiling point and gradually add to the caramelised sugar, stirring carefully and constantly until it is smooth. Season with salt.
Note: the cream has to be hot and added to hot sugar to get it right.
To make the ganache, heat the cream to boiling point then add the dark chocolate, stirring until combined and creamy.
Serve as a three-layer cake with caramel in between the layers and ganache on top. Chill before cutting.
Requested by Judy Robinson, of Dunedin.
This recipe comes from Ironic Cafe in Anzac Ave, Dunedin.
• If you have enjoyed a dish in an Otago cafe or restaurant and would like the recipe, write to Ask a Chef, Features, Otago Daily Times, PO Box 181, Dunedin, fax 474-7422, or email odt.features@odt.co.nz, including your name, address and a daytime telephone number, and we will request it.
