Recently, I’ve been getting into baking full-size cakes. It seems like there are never enough occasions that call for a big, beautiful cake. After having my cupcake business in Ohio, I am much more inclined to bake cakes than cupcakes now (like the rainbow cake and the strawberry cake).

Since I was experimenting with beets last week (see my sweet beet pancakes), I wanted to try out Joy the Baker‘s beet cake recipe that I’d been eyeing for a while. The recipe is similar to a basic chocolate cake with the addition of grated beets into the batter and the frosting- not too much extra effort to try something new and different.

As the beets were in the oven, I was getting a little nervous- my house was smelling like roasted dirt. But apparently, that’s normal when you’re dealing with beets. Smells were deceiving in this case- the cake certainly does not taste like dirt. Each chocolate-filled bite is strangely light and dense at the same time. You’ll have to bake it to see what I mean.

I served this cake to guests and didn’t reveal the secret ingredient until after. Everyone seemed pleasantly surprised.. or maybe just relieved that it wasn’t something worse than beets.

Oh, how the times have changed.

If you told me five years ago that I’d be recommending that you eat beets in any form, I would have laughed in your face. But here I am, about to tell you why you need to make beet pancakes- and soon.

This weekend, I had my first experience cooking with beets. Hubs brought home four beets for me from our farmer (Hilton) and I knew it was time to experiment. Is it weird that I am not ready to eat a plain roasted beet, and that I’d rather put it in a pancake first? Weird or not, that’s what I did. I roasted those babies up, trimmed and pureed them (all with GLOVED hands, which I highly recommend unless you want stained beet fingers), and mixed them up into my batter.

The verdict? Sweet and delicious. Hubs thought they could use a little extra syrup, but I didn’t think the earthiness of the beets came on too strong. The little guy enjoyed them, too (that means he actually took a few bites and didn’t run the other way asking for M-I-L-K).

If you’re new to beets, too, I would encourage you to start with this recipe. It’s a fairly safe introduction into the world of beets. Some day soon, I hope to face my fears and actually eat a beet on its own.. but until then, I’ll be sitting down to a plate of these sweet, pink cakes.

P.S. Like most pancake recipes, these are freezable!