It’s holiday season and I am following the example of our new PM and holidaying at home in the UK. As I write I am both celebrating my recent break (with my mother, my brother’s partner Arabella and my nephew Joel) and looking forward to joining my colleagues in the community of nonviolent communication at summer camp in Norfolk.
My mother, approaching her 80th birthday, came laden with vegetables from her allotment and with the intention of setting to work to strip my stairs. We started, though we didn’t finish! My nephew, Joel, soon to turn five, is outgoing and energetic and I enjoyed our time together as well as the stillness that descended after he left. Arabella, who usually carries the weight of responsibility for responding to her son’s yearning for company was able to rest a little and I was able to experience the pleasure of spending time with her after Joel went to bed. Today, a week after they all went home again, I am pausing to savour the pleasure of sharing time with them and the many needs met – to contribute and be contributed to, for connection and love, for fun and laughter and many more. These are precious moments.
Mum brought beetroot with her, ready cooked, and Joel and I together made Chocolate and Beetroot Cake from Green & Black’s wonderful book of chocolate recipes – with Joel sifting the floor and chocolate powder, cracking open eggs and stirring the mixture. The result was super-moist, highly tasty and a deep colour from the mix of chocolate and beetroot. A great success.
And in case you’d like to try it, and until such time as Green & Blacks ask me to take the recipe off my blog and tell you to go and buy the book here it is:
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 50 minutes
Use: 18cm (7in) round cake tin
Makes: 8 slices
Ingredients
100g (3.5oz) drinking chocolate
230g (8oz) self raising flour
200g (7oz) golden caster sugar
100g (3.5oz) dark chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter
250g (9oz) cooked beetroot
3 large eggs
To serve
Icing sugar for dusting
Creme fraiche
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 180deg C/350deg F/gas mark 4.
Butter and flour the cake tin.
Sift the flour and drinking chocolate together, then mix in the sugar. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl suspended over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Puree the beetroot in a food processor. Whisk the eggs, then stir them in with the beetroot. Add the beetroot and the chocolate mixtures to the dry ingredients and mix together thoroughly.
Pour the mixture into the cake tin. Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave the cake to stand in its tin for 10 minutes before turning it out on to a wire rack to cool. Serve dusted with icing sugar and some creme fraiche.