Beet Cupcakes

By popular demand, I forced myself to try making the flourless chocolate beet cupcakes from MingMakesCupcakes. Strictly for research purposes, of course.

The end result gets two thumbs up. They were delicious! The recipe was a little bit involved and it only yielded about ten cupcakes (because they're flourless and don't rise, I had to fill each cupcake to the very top, which meant that the batter didn't go very far), but it was worth it. The hardest part was actually getting the beets to puree. They proved to be tough little guys.

Even though the recipe was involved, I have to say I actually enjoyed going through all the steps. I felt like a real baker, doing things that I normally cut corners on, like using a double boiler and not the microwave to melt the chocolate...

...and tempering the egg whites into the rest of the batter.

For the frosting, I made homemade whipped cream swirled with a few drops of the beet juice for just a touch of pink. The cake itself is actually more like a chocolate torte than a traditional cupcake. It's incredibly rich and chocolaty without being cloyingly sweet. And you would never, ever know that there were beets in it.

I'll definitely be trying out some more of Ming's cupcakes.