This week’s GBBO frightened me a little bit if I’m honest; I have a general fear of bread so upping the ante on that with non-wheat flour was way too scary to even consider, I don’t have a nice electric mixer to make meringues which put me off the technical challenge which left the showstopper dairy free vegetable cake.

I am not a big fan of vegetable cake on the whole – I don’t even like carrot cake particularly – but that didn’t meant I wasn’t up for giving it a go.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to make carrot cake so I ran to my favourite recipe book in times of great need – Google.

After a bit of flicking through the millions of answers Google provided me with, I discovered the recipe for this Purple Velvet Torte which is a dairy-free AND gluten-free beetroot cake recipe. I’ve never made a torte or any other dairy free cake, I’ve never tried gluten-free baking – oh, and I don’t like beetroot.

What could possibly go wrong?

The first issue I had was that the simple ‘put things in your mixer and blend them’ instructions were less simple because I only have a teeny-tiny mixer and once I had blended the beetroot and the honey together it was at the max limit so I couldn’t add any of the other ingredients. (Christmas present suggestion right there – full sized food processor please!)

Cue pouring everything into a bowl and trying to use my hand blender on it without spraying the kitchen with beetroot and making it look like a murder scene.

When it came to the point where I was supposed to pour my ‘batter’ into the tin I began to be a little concerned. I did as instructed but the consistency of the mix was akin to something you would usually consume with a straw.

I very carefully put it in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.

It rose beautifully but still looked quite wet so I left it in for an extra ten minutes or so even though my skewer came out clean when I tested it.

Then I took it out and left it to cool and settle into the typical slightly wrinkly torte appearance I was expecting, very relieved that when I peeled back the paper on the sides, it didn’t just run all over the table as I had feared it might.

It held its shape and was sliceable but it was very, very wet. To the point that you ended up with a red puddle in the bottom of your bowl when it was served – I think it could have done with another ten minutes or so in hindsight.

That said, it has a lovely melt in the mouth texture as it is. Caius & Arthur both loved it and wolfed it down – swiftly followed by my portion and Tori’s portion because we weren’t so keen.

I still don’t like beetroot, even when it’s mixed with chocolate and turned into cake.

I don’t think I’ll be making it again in a hurry but I am assured that if you don’t have an aversion to beetroot (or beet-roop as Arthur calls it) then it is really quite tasty.

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