Beetroot and Cocoa Brownies

As many of you have noticed, I'm fiddling around with raw and superfoods at the moment. The apple of my eye, my Thermomix, is chiefly responsible for the success of anything involving batter and dough in my kitchen. It quickly turns nuts and dried fruits into a sticky mass, which is ideal for raw cheesecakes and the like. It also takes less than a minute to turn rice into rice flour or cashew nuts and water into a heavenly cashew milk.

The Thermomix has also saved the day more than once, at several mass catering and cooking events as well as dinner parties. At this point, I don't know what I would do without it. It's such an all-rounder and makes every cook's life easier, whether you're a professional chef or just cook at home.
Every time I write about the Thermomix, it kind of feels like I'm pushing some cheesy advertising, but I am an honest to God fan and can 100% recommend it to anyone.

The lovely Thermomix people recently approached me and asked me to produce a series of superfood recipes for them. The result is now available to buy from their web portal.

Superfoods are foods that have a higher nutrient content than others and are therefore good for our bodies. They are the most nutritious foods on earth and contain an extremely high number of vitamins and minerals, protein, essential fatty acids and more, effectively feeding our immune system.

I am a huge proponent of our very own local superfood, the beetroot. This root is very healthy and extremely versatile: it works in salads, turned into veggie crisps, in a risotto, as a soup, in combination with sheep's cheese and honey, juiced and even as a sweet dish, which brings us to today's recipe: the beetroot and cocoa brownie.

When Thermomix called, I had just bought their new food processor and was able to learn something new about it every single day. It didn't take long until I had created 10 delicious superfood recipes, which are now available to buy at Thermomix's new recipe site Rezepte-Portal von Thermomix. You'll get one of them today, as promised.

The Thermomix itself has a standard integrated recipe chip featuring many great recipes, and a variety of different recipe chips are available to buy. But I think this new recipe portal they've created is particularly useful, as it lets you search and download specific areas of interest like gluten-free or vegan recipes, enhancing your own recipe chip with things that are tailored to your taste and preferences.

And how does it all work?

The recipe site features digital recipes, divided into collections by subject matter. One collection will have around 10 to 12 recipes and costs from 3,99 euros.
They also have a weekly food planner and an individual shopping list, which assembles itself according to the recipes you've picked - a very handy tool making menu composition and food shop a lot simpler.
Another extremely user-friendly feature: you can activate the standard Thermomix cook books from the recipe site online, so you have all your new recipes saved and instantly ready to use.
You should really try this!
But in the meantime, enjoy my beetroot and cocoa brownies - also suitable as a delicious Valentine's Day surprise.

The superfood series contains the following recipes:

  • Matcha latte with homemade almond milk
  • Chia seed pudding with homemade cashew milk and pureed raspberries
  • Hemp seed and sauerkraut crackers
  • Beetroot and cocoa brownies
  • Quinoa salad with pomegranate, pumpkin and hempseed oil
  • Breakfast acai berry bowl
  • Kale and wheatgrass smoothie
  • Broccoli salad with cranberries and cashew nuts
  • The life-changing loaf of bread
  • Aronia jam with ginger and blood orange

Disclaimer: The product featured in this article was provided free of charge. This is a sponsored blog post. 

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Beetroot and Cocoa Brownies

1 casserole dish

Ingredients:

  • 300g beetroot (boiled)
  • 200g chocolate (70%)
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 TBSP cocoa powder
  • 30g coconut flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 180g unblanched, whole almonds
  • 5 TBSP honey
  • 100g coconut oil
  • pinch of salt

Preparation:

  1. Preheat the oven to 180 (fan). Add 100g of the almonds to the Thermomix mixing bowl and grind for 5 seconds at speed 10 until you have a fine almond meal. Remove and set aside. Put in the rest of the almonds and chop them for 5 seconds at speed 5. Also set aside.
  2. Now add half the chocolate, chop for 5 seconds at speed 6 and set aside.
  3. Add the rest of the chocolate to the mixing bowl, combine with the coconut oil and warm up the mixture for 2 minutes at speed 1 to 70.
  4. Put in the beetroot, eggs, honey, cocoa powder and salt using the scale button and mix for 20 seconds at speed 4.
  5. Add coconut flour, ground almonds, whole almonds, chopped chocolate and baking powder, also using the scale button, and combine for 30 seconds at speed 4.
  6. Line a baking tray with parchment (you can also use a casserole form), pour in the batter and bake in your preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.
    When done, take the brownies out of the oven and let them cool down before removing them from the tray by lifting up the parchment. Cut into squares and dust with some more cocoa powder.

Notes:

Cooking tip: these brownies are a little less sweet than conventional ones. If you have a sweet tooth, just add more honey (and proportionately more coconut flour as well). Instead of honey, also a superfood, by the way, you could use agave or maple syrup. If your batter is a bit dry, just add milk.

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