A few years ago, a good friend of mine lost her best friend to leukemia. She was only 22 years old. I can hardly imagine how painful it would be loosing a close friend to such a horrible sickness.
This weekend the same good friend of mine celebrated her 24th birthday. Upon reading this article about the American Cancer Society and how you can 'declare your birthday' to fully celebrate another year of life, I jumped on it. 
Not only did I declare my birthday on the site, but I also declared it on Facebook as well so all my friends could see (and hopefully do the same).
I just had to try my hand at this birthday cake recipe full of antioxidants. I knew it would be a great time to bake the cake, and to share it with someone who would really appreciate not only the cake, but the symbolism behind it. The recipe called for loads of strange ingredients including beets, applesauce, and instant coffee. I had never made a cake from scratch before, only from a box, and I was a bit nervous. Here are my tips for the ACS birthday cake:
From beginning to end, it took a really long time to make (about 4 hours). I had to start with a grocery store visit as we had no beets on hand. I went with the option of using canned beets so I wouldn't have to bake the beets then wait for them to cool before making them into a puree (shaving hours off the prep time) . It took two cans of sliced beets to make two cups of puree (for this, I used our Magic Bullet, which worked really well). I also picked up the rest of the ingredients (with the exception of the basic baking ingredients I had already at home, including sugar, white flour, eggs, vanilla and baking soda). All in all, it cost me $40. I didn't even go with the best of the best in terms of ingredients- and I cut corners, using vegetable oil (because I already had it) instead of canola oil (which the recipe called for). I never could find any quinoa flour, I even tried the local specialty food store with no luck. (Good thing the recipe lists what to substitute the quinoa flour for.) As I was checking out at the grocery store, I told the cashier that everything I was buying was for the ACS birthday cake, and I even gave her my copy of the recipe I had used to purchase from the ingredients list!
The hardest part, I thought, was adding the melted chocolate to the egg mixture. You have to add it slowly, as any time you add something hot to eggs, or eggs to something hot, you run the risk of accidently cooking the egg in the process- cake with cooked egg inside, no thank you! So mixing the batter, adding the chocolate slowly and taking time out to scrape down the sides in the process was the point when I really wished for three hands, or for one of those awesome stand alone mixers.
Speaking of those stand alone mixers, I believe that is what the recipe referred to numerous times as it called for mixing with a 'paddle attachment'. I'm not really sure what a paddle attachment is, but I made-do with my trusty hand mixer and used the serving utensil that came with my rice cooker (sort of like a paddle) to fold in the flour.
I forgot toothpicks at the store, so I used a chopstick instead to test if the cake was done. It worked. I used two round pans, and they were done about 10 minutes before the recipe said it would be, it's a good thing I checked otherwise they would've burnt! Now I'm not sure if that's because of the pans I was using, or because our oven seems awfully hot compared to other ovens, but my advice is always to check it early.
While the cake was cooling in the fridge, we rode our bikes to the nearby fruit stand and bought some local raspberries to decorate it with. The ganache filling was next on my to-do list. After a brief attempt, I gave up on the step calling to strain the berry puree to remove the seeds. We ate the seeds right up and no one seemed to mind at all! FYI, the recipe calls for 2 oz. of cream and berries. I have a digital kitchen scale, so it was not a problem for me to measure out 2 oz. But, if you could use the tip, it's about 1/4 of a cup cream, 1/2 cup berries.
The cream cheese frosting was delicious as well. I used a pastry bag to decorate the edges. On display on one of our glass cake plates, it looked so good! When I bake it again, I'll prepare the frosting with only two packages of cream cheese instead of three (accordingly, less sugar and vanilla as well). I had a lot of frosting left over, but generally, I frost sparingly (compared to others).
It tasted so good too!! I was nervous. Beets? In a cake? But it was the moistest, most delicious cake I've ever made. And it had a great story to go with it! The birthday girl was touched, and the cake was gobbled up by all! We all decided that the name "New Red Velvet" was a bit odd, because the cake tasted more like a chocolate/raspberry cake. So we named our cake in memory of our friend instead.