Valentine's Day Heart Cakes with Natural Beet Puree Colouring

heart shaped valentines day cake baked on white plate

Valentine's Day Heart Cakes with Natural Beet Puree Colouring

Everyone will love these sweet Valentine's Day heart cakes with natural red colouring

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword cake recipe, natural food colouring, valentine's day dessert

Prep Time 1 30

Cook Time 20

Total Time 40

Servings cakes

Calories 277kcal

Author Jen

Ingredients

½ cup unsalted butter room temperature
1 ½ cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
¼ cup beet puree
1 cup icing sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon water
¼ teaspoon beet puree
3 medium sized beets

Instructions

For the Beet Puree

Wash beets, trim beet tops off and wrap beets individually in foil. Place foil wrapped beets on a baking sheet and place in 400°F oven for 60-90 minutes. Poke a fork in the beets and when they are tender, pureé beets in a blender or food processor. Process the beets until they are smooth. Set aside to fully cool.

For the Heart Cakes

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour the baking pan. This recipe will make a double layer cake, in 8" round pans or 12 mini-heart cakes.
Beat together butter and sugar, until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Finally, mix in the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, whisk together milk and ¼ cup of beet puree.
Add the beet and milk mixture and the flour to the butter mixture in small batches - alternating between the beets and flour.
Mix together until batter forms and colour is consistent throughout.
Scoop the batter into the prepared baking dish. Make certain that the baking dish is buttered thoroughly. For our small heart baking pans (or cupcakes) bake in 350°F oven for 10-15 minutes, until the toothpick inserted comes out clean. For 8" round cake bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Remove cakes from the oven, let cool for 10 minutes and then remove from pan and let cool on a rack.

For the icing

Whisk together icing sugar, vanilla, beet puree and water. Add more water if the icing is too thick or more icing sugar if the icing is too thin. Spread over completely cooled cakes. To make the white icing simply skip adding the beet puree.

Notes

Nutrition Info is to be used as a rough guide. Nutrition Info is based on the products I am using and you may not be using the same products/brands. Thus, the Nutrition Info may vary.

Nutrition