Can't beat beet cupcakes!

The above picture may not be the best quality, but the delicious veggies that were delivered to us were top notch! This box included:

• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Cucumber
• Green Onions
• Cilantro
• Fennel
• Wild Red Kale 
• ‘Red Ace’ Beets
• Corn
• Strawberries

As usual, the lettuce, cucumber, and green onions were set aside for lunch salads. A few of the veggies are still in our fridge to be made into great things this weekend. However, my biggest concern was the beets. We've been dreading the arrival of beets because we both recall really disliking them. I think we actually cheered when we read this line in our weekly newsletter, "We grew far fewer beets this year, but wanted to be sure and include them a time or two in the boxes." Hooray!!

However, we're determined to try everything and use as much as possible so I immediately started looking for recipes. I think my Google search was something like, "Delicious beet recipes for people who hate beets". Surprisingly enough I got a myriad of awesome results. Apparently cooking beets into dishes so you can't even taste them is pretty easy. Even better, there are a TON of baked good recipes that feature the lowly beet. Perfect. 

So, with that, I decided to make beet cupcakes. What better way to get a sweet treat fix AND get my veggies in, all in one!?

For fun, I decided to put two recipes up against each other to see which was better. After much searching, I picked this Fudgy Vegan Beet Cupcake recipe and this Chocolate Beet Cupcake recipe.  The process looked something like:

Sad looking beets in the sink

Bright foamy red batter

Absolute mess of bright red beet juice everywhere....

Ready to hit the oven!

Chocolate beet cupcakes, finished, before adding cream cheese frosting

Fudgy vegan cupcakes, finished, with dusting of cocoa powder

It was a pretty great experiment. I stayed close to true on both recipes, though I did substitute unsweetened almond milk in the non-vegan cupcake recipe because it's what I had on hand. I also didn't follow the cream cheese frosting recipe at all because I didn't have it in front of me when I made it the next morning. 

The result? Both were great! I think I actually liked the vegan version better (and, at 160 calories a pop, they're a pretty guilt-free treat!). Bearclaw liked the regular frosted version better. Neither of us could taste the beets!

Note: The beets in both recipes have to be roasted for almost an hour. Make sure to take that into account before you start baking!

After all that, I do have to include one final observation. I feel like this is where someone says, "I told you so" but I have to add that after all this was done, we did both try a little bit of roasted beet. Apparently they aren't so bad. Dare I say we might even like them? That might be going too far but I think next time we'll try to incorporate them into something that doesn't hide their flavor quite so much :)