If you think chocolate beetroot cake is a bit outré, just remember that we have all been eating carrot cake for years. The beetroot does the same job as the carrot: it contributes the natural sweetness of root vegetables and keeps the cake remarkably moist.

In 18th-century England, many foods that we think of as vegetables, including artichokes, potatoes and carrots, went into cakes, puddings and pies. Now, in a move to make the food served in National Trust tearooms more relevant to its surroundings, National Trust chefs in the West Midlands have searched the archives to develop teatime recipes linked historically to their respective properties.

As a result, you can sit down to a slice of parsnip and caraway cake, pumpkin and banana bread, or a kitchen garden cake that involves parsnip, carrot, potato and apple.

The handwritten recipe for this cake was left on my doorstep a good 15 years ago by a Mexican-born neighbour in Australia. When I put it in my 1993 cookery book New Food, it swept like wildfire across that beetroot-loving continent, to the point where it is now considered a fair dinkum Aussie recipe.

If for no other reason, bake it to drive the children mad. Tell them that it’s chocolate cake and their hands reach out immediately. Tell them that it’s chocolate beetroot cake and the hands stop in mid-air, and waver...but not for long.

CHOCOLATE BEETROOT CAKE
Serves 6

Prep: 20 min
Cook: 50 min

75g cocoa powder or powdered drinking chocolate
180g plain flour
2tsp baking powder
250g caster sugar
250g cooked beetroot
3 large eggs
200ml corn oil
1tsp vanilla extract
Icing sugar for dusting

METHOD

Heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and lightly butter a 20cm (8in) round or square cake tin. Sift the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder into a bowl. Mix in the sugar, and set these dry ingredients aside.

Purée the beetroot in a food processor. Add the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and oil, and whiz until it is smooth. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the beetroot mixture and mix it all lightly. Pour into the prepared cake tin.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean (cover with a loose sheet of foil if it starts to brown at about 30 minutes).

This cake will not rise a great deal, and the top will crack. After removing from the oven, leave it for 15 minutes before taking it out of the the pan. Cool on a wiore rack and dust with icing sugar before serving.

Jill.dupleix@thetimes.co.uk

Very Simple Food by Jill Dupleix is published by Quadrille at £20. Order from Times Books First for £16, plus £2.25 p&p. 0870-160 8080

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