I found a fab recipe on the BBC Good Food website for a Blitz and bake beetroot and chocolate cake and I had been using it only slightly modified for a good few months.

The results were certainly edible, my boys scoffing a whole batch in less than a week. However, it was always a very messy experience as the mix was extremely runny, and that’s an understatement.

So I have hacked the recipe, by adding some extra flour and adding a dash more chocolate powder along with cutting the amount of sugar.  I am now then, left with this:

1 pack of (Sainsbury’s) vacuum packed beetroot (250g)

200g (9 oz) caster sugar

A good shake of cocoa powder to taste (perhaps not as much as 100g or 4 1/2 oz)

350g (12oz) plain flour

A good whack of baking powder – at least a teaspoon

3 large eggs – Free Range of course!

2 lids full vanilla essence

200ml (about a third of a pint) of good quality oil – I use rape seed oil

100g (4 1/2 oz) packet of (Sainsbury’s) chocolate chips for cooking

So there’s your ingredients. Now, as the BBC recipe says, it’s a blitz and bake, so you really do just chuck it in the mixer and blitz it before baking it! I find that putting the beetroot in first, juice and all, with a metal blade is the best way to chop it up.

Then put your plastic mixing paddle in and add the other ingredients except the eggs, oil and chocolate chips. Give them a right good spin before cracking in the three eggs and giving the whole thing a good thrash!

Finally, slow the machine right down to drizzle in the oil and then add the chocolate chips.

I find that this produces around eighteen muffins of a decent size.  Now I’ve got a pair of six muffin baking trays so I do a twelve then a six.

I heat the oven to 180C on the fan setting and leave them until I can smell the chocolate. Usually about twenty minutes, but hey you’re an adult and you’re in charge so you decide huh?!