Dress up your dessert or breakfast or snack with this beautiful Rustic Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing!
Rustic Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing is a sweet alternative to carrot cake, but colorful and unique. This recipe will have people asking “how do you make it?”. Its the best way to get kids to eat their veggies…well maybe not but once the kids taste this, they’ll use that excuse to get a second slice.
Okay interweb folks, Kevin here posting because even a “day without women” can’t stop Vintage Kitty. Though it is truly a good thing that Kitty did all the hard work earlier in the week. What Kitty did to create this Rustic Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing was actually to start with her favorite carrot cake recipe, but with a vintage twist to give it a unique look and flavor.
Kitty and I were talking about red velvet cakes a while ago (because what couple doesn’t discuss historic confectioneries in their free time?) and she mentioned that before all the crazy red food coloring was available, beets were used. While this isn’t red velvet (no cocoa here), it is a take on it using the beets instead of carrots in this cake and boy is it a beautiful change.
There are a few pro tips with this recipe, earned through several test batches of this cake (its a sacrifice that I am willing to make for you, dear reader, to eat all the trial runs of Kitty’s food). The most important one is to use a fine grater size for the beets and grate directly into a bowl. The beets get juicy when grating them and you want to save all that. The other pro tip is to make sure you wear an apron or clothes you don’t care about and kitchen gloves if you have them, because that beet juice is no joke….it’ll turn you magenta in no time.
Another thing I learned that impressed me about this is that you can have this cake in the oven in about 20 minutes without even using an electric mixer. You can also make the icing when it bakes, saving time.
With the icing on top, it is absolutely beautiful and delicious and the Rustic Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing is an amazing dessert…..However, these beets are sweet enough without the icing that I like to bake it in a loaf pan you can cut a slice and toast it in the oven for a minute and have it for a sweet breakfast treat (its way more original than a donut or danish).
This Rustic Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing will make a splash where ever you bring it. Dress up your dessert and eat your veggies all at once, what else could you ask for?
Ingredients
Dry
- 1 cup AP flour - sifted 4.5 oz
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup coconut
- 1/2 cup walnuts
Wet
- 1 large egg
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1/4 cup coconut oil melted and cooled, but still liquid
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 lemon zest
- 1/8 tsp lemon extract
- 1 cup beets finely grated 6 oz - weigh before grating
Icing
- 1 cup confectioners sugar sifted
- 6 oz cream cheese
- 2 tbsp whole milk
- 1/4 tsp lemon extract
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Prep
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Grease and flour a standard loaf pan
- Remove cream cheese from refrigerator to soften at room temperature
Cake
- Mix all dry ingredients together
- Whisk together all wet ingredients in separate bowl until well combined
- Fold dry ingredients into wet mixing with a spatula or wooden spoon until just mixed (be careful not to over mix)
- Pour batter into prepared pan
- Bake for 40 - 50 minutes (until a toothpick inserted comes out clean)
- Allow to cool for 10 minutes
- Run a knife along the edge of the pan to help separate from the pan
- Turn the cake out onto a cooling rack.
Icing
- Whisk together sugar and cream cheese
- Slowly add in milk and extracts and whisk until smooth
Ice the Cake
- Apply the Icing to the top of the cooled cake
Nutrition
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Monika Dabrowski says
This is such an interesting recipe! Beetroot happens to be my favourite vegetable and I love the idea of using it in a dessert recipe, especially with other fabulous ingredients such as walnuts, coconut and oil, instead of butter. And it looks so beautiful too:)
Stefanie Miller says
I turned this into a layer cake. Cooked in 2, 8″ pie dishes at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Also used 8oz of Cream cheese with 1/2 cup powdered sugar and iced between the layers and on top. We’ll see how it goes on Christmas Eve.
Vintage Kitty says
That’s sounds very festive! Hope everyone loves it!
Sandie says
I did this recipe and the flavour and the sweetness is simply perfect but I’m a bit puzzled about something. The loaf cake once cooked was not reddish. The batter was a nice dark pink/red colour and once it was cooked the colour changed to brown.
Vintage Kitty says
Hi Sandie! I’m glad you liked the flavor of the recipe. I had this happen when I made my golden beet ravioli. Some of the beets turned black. It’s oxidation and I’ve heard it can happen from the beets being picked too early. But in my experience. it’s only happened to yellow beets. Next time you make it, immediately toss the grated beets with the lemon juice. That should help.