BEING vegetarian I eat a lot of vegetables and slowly I am beginning to incorporate them more into my baking.

Last month I brought you cauliflower cheese cake, and this month we have another vegetable packed recipe!

Two ingredients that I really like to add together to make great cakes are beetroot and chocolate.

Adding beetroot to a chocolate cake recipe makes it wonderfully fudgy and moist and I also like to think despite the cake being chocolatey, with the addition of the beetroot it's possibly a tiny bit healthy, too!

The beetroot is a vegetable which, although it has an acquired taste, is loved by many, and the consumption of beetroot has been linked with many health benefits including improved blood flow, better stamina and also a reduction in blood pressure.

The usually deep purple roots of beetroot are eaten either boiled, roasted as a cooked vegetable, cold as a salad after cooking and adding oil and vinegar, or raw and shredded, either alone or combined with salad.

A large proportion of the commercial production is processed into boiled and sterilised beetroots or into pickle jars.

The beetroot taste is described as sweet, earthy and tender to eat and it is grown in the ground. It is related to turnips and even swedes.

Beetroot evolved from wild 'seabeet' which is a native of coastlines from India to Britain. Two thousand years ago, prior to being modified by cultivation techniques, beetroot had a carrot-shaped root and only the leaves were eaten. Interestingly, the small root was used for medicinal purposes by ancient Greeks and Romans!

The familiar rounded root variety was developed around the 16th century and gained widespread popularity in Europe a couple of hundred years later.

Today, beetroot is common throughout much of Europe, and is used extensively in Scandinavian, Eastern European and Russian cuisine.

You may not initially think that beetroot and chocolate would go together, but this has to be tried to be believed.

The recipe that I am sharing with you this month is a rich cake that goes perfectly with or without the icing topping.

Beetroot is great in recipes for salads, risottos or soups but the sweet, earthy flavour of beetroot and gaudy colour also work well in cakes as you can see.

Please don't let the inclusion of a vegetable (especially if you do not like beetroot!) put you off of trying this contemporary cake.

The beetroot adds a lovely sweetness to an already classic chocolate cake, but because the taste and texture is altered only slightly, I challenge any chocolate cake lover not to like it!

This cake can also be baked in a different-shaped tin, and would make a great twist on a traditional birthday cake. It serves around eight to 10 people and is best kept in an airtight tin when stored.

If you like look of this beetroot treat cake why not give it a try?

Keighley Clandestine Cake Club are looking for new members. We meet every six weeks in secret locations to eat, chat and swap cake!

E-mail me at m_crowther@ymail.com for further information.