Aphorisms from the Professor: Brillat-Savarin

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Food should not be this colour!!!

Cooking with beets makes me a bit nervous because of the way they turn everything red (especially my hands - I've peeled just about every beet we've eaten this fall, and I'm always very concerned about accidentally touching something right afterwards). And grating them in the food processor? Well let's just say it looks very disturbing and...violent...and leave it at that. So I probably shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when the batter for my beet muffins turned an incredible shade of pink. I was particularly thrown off because this is a colour normally associated with the kind of sweet or berry flavors that I actively avoid. Weirdly, the bubble-gum fuschia of the batter completely disappeared in the final product, leaving the muffins with just a faint and somewhat eerie pink glow....WHERE DID ALL THAT PINK GO?!?!

I followed this recipe for beet cake, but baked it in muffin-form (this recipe made about 14 muffins), and didn't bother with the icing. We were also mysteriously unable to locate our white sugar (which remains very weird, as white granulated sugar is an important part of my morning coffee ritual), and we didn't have packed brown sugar, so I just substituted cane sugar for both.

4 comments:

  1. Wowza! I adore beets. ADORE THEM! I want to try this crazy colored madness :D

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  2. haha i love the eerie pink glow! what a good description! :)

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  3. I have used beets as an ingredient in unexpected foods before and know about this color phenomenon! Check out my beet fusilli... I have also used beets in a chocolate cake. They cooked away to where you did not even know they were they but it was a wonderful moist cake. So I just know this version would be terrific too. Great job. GREG

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  4. Wow! I have never thought to use beets in a muffin recipe. How interesting! I have no doubt that the beets add a lot of good moisture to the muffins. I really like this idea!

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