Even if you hate beets you’re gonna love these soft beet chocolate cupcakes with some honey cream cheese frosting on top!

Ah, yes. The beet chocolate cupcakes… I love using fruit and veggies for a the liquid substite in muffins and cupcakes. Remember the Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting? I used pumpkin there, but here I’m using beets 😀

Fruit and veggie purées make cupcakes so soft and moist and in my experience they last longer before going dry. So perfect for baking them in advance 🙂

I know they don’t look very Christmasy, but hey… chocolate… who doesn’t love anything with chocolate on Christmas 🙂 or at any other time for that matter 😛

This Christmas I’m off cooking duty. We’re invited to my mum and dad’s on Christmas Eve and to my husband’s relatives on Christmas Day. Although I obviously love cooking it feels nice not having to prepare tons of food. We’ll only be making the traditional nut roll, everything else is done already. And then I can rest and enjoy the holidays!

I’ve been feeling very well these last couple of months, but pregnancy does a take some toll on my energy. Working hard these days before Christmas I think me and the little one deserve a little time off 😀 Thank god for mums!

Okay, back to the cupcakes!

You can actually make any other frosting if you prefer something else, but I’m a big fan of cream cheese frosting and honey. So I joined those two and I love how great the this sweet and sour frosting pairs with the earthy chocolaty taste of the beet chocolate cupcakes.

Yup, good life!

Let’s do some baking!

BEET CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH HONEY CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

Course Dessert

Keyword chocolate cake, frosting cupcakes, muffins

Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Servings 20 cupcakes

Ingredients

BEET CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla
3 TBSP cocoa powder
4 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
2 TBSP sunflower oil
2 cups beetroot purée
2 TBSP lemon juice

HONEY CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

200 g cream cheese room temperature
150 g soft butter
2 tsp vanilla
5 TBSP icing sugar
3 TBSP honey

Instructions

Beet Chocolate Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 170 °C.
In a large mixing bowl combine flour, baking soda, vanilla and cocoa powder.
In the bowl of the electric mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, blend toogether the eggyolks, brown sugar and sunflower oil on a medium speed until well combined.
Add beetroot purée and lemon juice and blend again.
Keep your mixer on medium speed and slowly add the flour mixture to the yolk mixture.
In a separate bowl (using a clean whisk attachment or a handmixer) whip eggwhites and a pinch of salt until stiff.
Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the eggwhites into the batter until well combined.
Divide the batter among 20 paper lined muffin cups, filling about 3/4 full.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 – 25 minutes, until the toothpick comes out clean.
Cool in the baking pan for a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Honey Cream Cheese Frosting

To make the frosting, take crwam cheese, soft butter and vanilla and beat until the mixuture becomes fluffy and has a much lighter color.
Gradually add icing sugar and honey and mix until well combined.
If the frosting looks too runny, rerigirate it until it has the right consistency.

Assembly

When the cupcakes have cooled completely, spread the frosting over them and sift over some cocoa powder.

Notes

To make homemade beetroot purée you can either purée cooked or roasted beetroot. For roasting, I’m wrapping the whole beetroot in foil and remove the skin afterward.