Beetroot Love Muffins

My favourite part of this recipe is when you add the grated beetroot to the other ingredients and the mixture changes to a vibrant popping dark pink, like a mad chemistry experiment. The colour is slightly muted after baking of course, but you're still left with spectacular muffins which are light, moist and have a similar texture to carrot cake.

A good dollop of cream cheese icing

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

2/3 cup caster sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

generous 2/3 cup milk

2 large eggs, beaten

1/2 vegetable oil

largish beetroot, grated (about 100 grams)

for the icing

150 grams cream cheese

4 1/2 tablespoons icing sugar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

pink food colouring

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin, I use paper muffin/cupcake cases.

Sift and combine into a large bowl the flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon and ginger.

In a separate bowl, mix the milk, eggs and oil and then stir in the beetroot so that the mixture turns bright pink.

Pour the wet mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and stir together until just combined. Then spoon large dollops of the mixture into the prepared muffin pan.

Bake for about 20 minutes (or 11 minutes for mini muffins) until risen and springy to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

In the mean time, prepare the icing, beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar and lemon juice until smooth and creamy. Add a few drops of colouring.