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Hot Pink Cupcakes with a Secret Ingredient!
I love to put veggies into unlikely places. Kale blackberry smoothies. Zucchini chocolate cake. Spinach in a banana shake. You may be skeptical, but I promise they all taste amazing!
These cupcakes were a huge hit around our little farm house. The cousins are up from downstate and with an plethora of boys from ages 13 to 17 in the house they didn’t last long. They were even devoured by those who claimed to hate beets, and earned “best cupcake ever” from my mom who generally doesn’t care for cupcakes. If those aren’t convincing reasons, what can I say? Go find yourself a beet or two, some eggs and flour and keep reading so you can “ooh”, “ahh” and exclaim over the vibrant pink of the batter like I did while making these. Or maybe you’d rather leave the exclamations to me.
They don’t retain all of their former glory, but the color says pretty strong after baking! They have a little tye-dye effect inside with pink and orangey hues.
Topped with a Lemon-Lime frosting, lime zest and a blackberry.
Pink Lemon-Blackberry Cupcakes
adapted from Barefoot Kitchen Witch
makes 15-16 cupcakes
1 large beet, cooked and peeled.
1 cup milk
1 stick of unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Zest from 1 Lemon
Blend beet and milk in the blender or food processor until it’s creamy and a wonderful pink color. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add both eggs and mix well. Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly add to flour mixture, then mix in the beet and milk mixture in small amounts until the batter is smooth. Add lemon zest. If you like, add about 1-1.5 cups of blackberries to the batter.
Bake cupcakes at 350 degrees for about 18-20 minutes until you can pull a knife out clean from the center. Let cool on wire racks. Once completely cooled, you can frost them.
Luscious Lemon Lime Frosting
makes enough for 15-16 cupcakes and sample tastes for 5 teenage boys.
3 TB Butter
Juice of one lemon
1 TB milk
3c Powdered Sugar
Lemon and Lime zest
Dash of salt
Cream butter with 1/2c powdered sugar, and mix in as much sugar as you can without it flying everywhere. Then add a little lemon juice and keep mixing. Slowly add lemon juice and sugar little by little. Add TB of milk, salt and zest. If the frosting is too runny just add a little bit more powdered sugar. These measurements are approximate. Garnish with blackberries and lime twists.
