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beetroot and chocolate brownies – celebrating #FairtradeFortnight

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… 24th Feb – 9th March is fairtrade fortnight, a whole two weeks to celebrate the amazing work that the good people at the fairtrade foundation have achieved over the past 22 years.  Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of decades, fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world.  It is a sad fact that even now since those 22 years, developing countries still have massive problems with all of these issues, so much so that the fabulous Foncho from Colombia has started his own campaign to ensure the stability of banana farmers all over the world… you can read all about his project and sign his petition here.

… of course as a foodie, for me fairtrade is a mark of reliability for not just food grown with humanity but of exceptional quality… and there’s a great range of products available from many of the UK’s leading supermarkets, from spices to fruit and veg and of course chocolate…

beetroot and chocolate brownies
as many of you will know I debuted my premier London demo-cooking session at Westfield Stratford yesterday.  It was an unusual experience and I felt thrown to the wolves somewhat as it was unlike any of the other demo experiences i’d done… I really had to work the crowd and during my first session I made meatballs which took a long time to pique anyone’s interest but on the second session I whipped up these glorious brownies, adapted from a recipe from the River Cottage Every Day book, and they went down an absolute treat, so much so that I changed my third session to make these again… the kids seems to love the pink icing and the mums love that they can fool their kids into eating vegetables and of course everyone loves chocolate…

for the brownies
250g 70% dark chocolate – all the The Co-Operative own brand chocolate is fairtrade
250g slightly salted butter – diced
230g light brown soft sugar
3 large free-range eggs
160g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
250g beetroot – cooked until soft

for the icing
the juices from the beetroot
roughly 200g icing sugar
2 or 3 tablespoons TOTAL greek yoghurt

grease and line a shallow brownie tin roughly 20cm x 25cm

you can either buy raw beetroot, peel it and boil it until soft or I discovered that most supermarkets sell 250g packets of pre-cooked beetroot which works superbly well and saves a lot of mess… make sure you purchase the beetroot cooked in natural juices not pickled, that would not be nice…

break the chocolate and place it into an oven-proof bowl with the butter and pop the bowl into your cold oven and turn it on to pre-heat to 180C… the chocolate will gently melt as you warm your oven but keep an eye on it, the bowl gets hot, melting the choc and the butter and after about 8 mins you can simply take it out of the oven and stir until it’s melted and gloriously glossy

place the eggs and sugar into a bowl and whisk together until blended and smooth then pour in the chocolate and beat together gently

sift over the flour and baking powder and using the same balloon whisk fold it in to the chocolate egg mix a couple of times

in a separate bowl, grate the beetroot.  Squeeze out most of the juices and retain the bowl with the juices in it

place the grated beetroot into the brownie batter and fold it through gently until all the flour and beetroot has been evenly dispersed

pour into your brownie tin and bake on 180C for 25 – 30 mins… you want a skewer to come out slightly clean but retain a little moisture – set aside to cool

to make the icing simply add the icing sugar and yoghurt to the beetroot juices and beat until you have the desired consistency… you may need to reduce the amount of juices you have before you add the sugar… then simply drizzle this with wild abandon over the brownies

eat and of course, enjoy!

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Comments

  2. I love beetroot in chocolate bakes and especially brownies Dom! And yours are as pretty as a picture too, far too many pieces for you and the Viking, think you'll need to send me some! K xxx

  3. Interesting to hear about the attitude of the crowd at your demo. Healthy, nutritious meatballs? Nah, we want chocolate with bright pink gooey stuff on top!!

  6. Beautiful-looking brownies. I really, really want to like the beetroot/chocolate combination but sadly just can't seem to get on with it. The cakes I have tasted had chunks of beetroot in them though so perhaps I would like it better if the beetroot was grated as here. They really do look divine!

  7. What's not to love about brownies? I love the addition of the yoghurt in the icing. And for me, given the choice, it's Fairtrade every time!

  9. Great looking pink icing on those beetroot brownies. So clever of you to switcheroo and make double brownies. Never change a winning game (or so they say).

  11. I love chocolate beetroot cakes and these brownies look absolutely glorious! Congrats on your debut demo – that's amazing! Love the beetroot icing – stroke of genius 🙂

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  13. I spied these on facebook, incredible colour, really eye catching. I'd love to try beetroot in brownies, I did beetroot fudge in the very early days of my blog but not revisited since. So I'm long over due for some beetroot baking!