Book club baking - Chocolate Beetroot Brownies and Chocolate Marshmallow Truffles

As my last post may have indicated, I did some baking over the weekend. And as a number of you deduced, it was a little more extensive than usual.

The reason? This week, it was my turn to host book club. My book club has a brilliant arrangement in place, whereby we meet at 7pm and the host provides dessert.

This combination of books, dessert-dinner, and familiar friends makes, for me, a perfect social event. And of course, if you're hosting, it provides a perfect opportunity to take to the kitchen.

When I last hosted friends, it was three days after we returned from Tasmania and I had little time to plan or prepare dishes in advance.

This time around, I was in a better position and I wanted to take full advantage of it.

I decided to make a vegan vegetable dessert trio, which I had immense fun planning (even as I chuckled to myself at the lentil-eating-hippy stereotype that "vegan vegetable dessert" conjures up!):

• Chocolate beetroot brownies
• Apple rhubarb pie
• Apple zucchini spice cake

I also threw in a non-vegan, non-vegetable bonus:

• Marshmallow truffle balls

The chocolate marshmallow truffles were actually a last minute swap in for Oh She Glows Itty Bitty Carrot Cake Cookies, which I managed to slightly under-bake (they were still nice, but not quite up to being given to others). I probably did make too much food, my book club having 10 people (3 of whom weren't attending!) rather than 20, but it was great to have an excuse to bake on a larger scale.

The brownie and truffle ball recipes are below, whilst the apple products will appear another time :)

Chocolate beetroot brownies

I used to make these quite regularly, but somehow got out of the habit. As a result, I managed to lose the recipe I used to use. Thank goodness for this blog, which prevents similar scenarios happening now...

Given my recipe-less state, I adapted this beetroot chocolate cake recipe from FatFree Vegan Kitchen.  Things turned out as I hoped they would: moist, chocolatey, and fudgy. 

Adapted from FatFree Vegan Kitchen

Makes 16 brownies

Wet ingredients:

• 400g tin of canned beetroot, drained
• 1/2 cup apple sauce
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Dry ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1/3 cup good quality cocoa
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• ~50g dark chocolate, chopped into small chunks (or buy chocolate chips)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 160'C fan forced (180'C non-fan forced) and line a square baking tin with baking paper.

2. Drain the canned beetroot and place beets in a food processor. Process until pureed, and then combine with the 1/2 cup apple sauce, 2 tablespoons water, vanilla, and apple cider. Mix well. 

Things will look quite red. Don't worry.

3. Mix the dry ingredients together, with the exception of the chopped chocolate. Then add in the beet mix and stir until well-combined.

4. Add the chopped chocolate and stir through until just combined.

5. Pour mixture into pan and bake for ~40 minutes (the original recipe noted 35 - 60 minutes depending on the size of your pan; if you're unsure, check after 35 minutes). 

Remove from the oven when a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, or nearly clean, depending on how moist and fudgey you like things (I took mine out when the toothpick wasn't quite clean).

6. Allow to cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes, and then cool completely on a baking tray before storing and cutting.

You could ice these, but I didn't.

It's hard to believe that these are oil and butter free. Even with the chocolate / chocolate chips, the nutritional profile is pretty impressive:

They don't taste vegan or vegetable-y, although they don't taste quite like regular brownies. Notably, they also don't leave you feeling slightly sick (which I recall regular brownies doing). I might be returning these to my baking rotation.

Marshmallow Truffle Balls

These balls went some way towards balancing out the healthy nature of the brownies, and they're certainly a little different to the nut / dried fruit balls I typically make. They are, however, incredibly easy and fun.

I adapted Anna Johnston's recent white chocolate marshmallow truffles recipe, which caught my attention last week. I can imagine a number of variations working well, including vegan adaptations, which I might try in future.

Adapted from The Hospitality Guru

Makes 16 balls (these were quite large, so you could easily make 20+ if you were more skilled with rolling smaller teaspoonfuls)

Ingredients:

• 100g cream cheese (I used Philadelphia light) *
• 1/2 cup icing sugar + 1 tbsp white sugar
• 100g dark chocolate
• 1 tbsp good quality cocoa
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup mini marshmallows, or regular marshmallows chopped up *
• Coloured sprinkles

* If you use dairy free cream cheese and something other than marshmallows (dried fruit, nuts, biscuit pieces...), these could be made vegan. I just tried some of the cream cheese / chocolate mix and skipped the final product with the mallows (I'm less concerned with milk than with gelatin...) :P

Instructions:

1. Blend the cream cheese in a food processor until smooth. Add the sugar and process until well combined.

2. Add the cocoa and vanilla to the cream cheese / sugar mix, and process to mix.

3. Heat your chocolate in the microwave, or if your microwave has stopped working (true! ours broke!), in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.

4. Add the cream cheese mixture to the melted chocolate, and fold through to mix. Stir until smooth. Add the marshmallow pieces.

5. Pour ~1/4 cup sprinkles into a large bowl. Roll teaspoonfulls of the chocolate mix into the sprinkles, then place on a foil lined tray.

6. Set in the fridge (or freezer) until set - at least 1 hour but preferably longer. I set these in the freezer and noticed they didn't get very hard even in there.

As a last minute aside, our book this month was The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. I'd recommend it!


Are you in a book club? Or have fail proof desserts for entertaining?

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