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Chocolate and beets are a perfect pairing. Both are earthy, and they enhance each other’s flavor. It’s one of my favorite combinations, and they come together beautifully in my recipe for chocolate beet marble bread.
I’ve mentioned this before – I am not much of a baker. But every once in a while, I get the urge to bake something. And in this case, I felt like baking something fancy. But, I promise, if I can bake a marbled loaf bread, you can too!
Making a Marble Bread is Easier than it Looks
I recently went down a rabbit hole on Youtube watching soapmaking videos. Yes, I know that is random, but it’s related to today’s recipe, I promise. One of the techniques several of these Youtubers have talked about is called a “Hangar Swirl,” which can be described as running a thick wire (usually made from a clothes hangar) across the length of a slab of soap to push and pull the different colors of soap around in the mold, making a swirly, marbled design.
The premise behind a marbled loaf of bread is similar. You’ll layer the chocolate batter and the beet batter in the loaf pan, and then take a skewer and swirl them together. Looks complicated, but is pretty easy in the end.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Beets
You can use any color beets you like (or have on hand) in this recipe. Even though I used red beets, and the beet batter is a deep fuchsia color, once baked, only the exterior crust remains colored. The inside turns a light brown color. Using golden beets or chioggia beets would have the same result, so feel free to use them interchangeably.
Cocoa Powder
I used a cocoa powder that I brought back to the US from a trip to Colombia (Lok Cacao Powder, not sponsored), but unfortunately it isn’t available for retail purchase here. Readily available cocoa powder brands I would recommend are Ghirardelli and Valrhona. Really, you can’t go wrong with most cocoa powders.
What I don’t recommend is using hot cocoa mix.
Whole Milk Yogurt
As I talk about in my Farmers Market Celebration Bread recipe, the yogurt is what provides the acidic component to the bread. The acid in the yogurt reacts with the basic baking powder, and that chemical reaction causes the bread to rise as it bakes.
Tips and Tricks
This bread rises due to a chemical reaction between the yogurt and the baking powder/baking soda combination. This reaction released carbon dioxide, which is what gives the bread a fluffy texture. This reaction starts immediately after the wet ingredients are mixed together with the dry ingredients, so once that step takes place, you’ll want to move quickly. The faster you can get the bread in the oven, the greater the rise you will get out of the loaf of bread.
Let the chocolate beet marble bread cool completely before trying to slice it. If you slice it while warm, it’ll crumble and fall apart. It’ll still taste delicious, but it won’t have any structural integrity.
Serving Suggestions
Chocolate beet marble bread is an excellent dessert, especially when paired with tea (I’d pair it with a chocolate Pu-erh tea). Try toasting the bread slices in a toaster oven and adding a pat of butter for an extra decadent way to enjoy the bread.
Chocolate Beet Marble Bread
This chocolate beet marble bread looks fancy, but is straightforward recipe with big flavor and impressive presentation.
Ingredients
- 3 medium red beets
- 1 ½ cups All-purpose Flour, divided
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- ⅓ tsp Baking Soda
- ⅓ tsp Kosher Salt
- ⅓ cup Sugar
- 2 Eggs (large)
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- ¼ cup Avocado Oil, plus more to coat pan
- ⅓ cup Whole Milk Yogurt, plain
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F
- Cut stems off beets (if present) and wrap in aluminum foil. Roast in the oven for 40 minutes or until tender.
- Remove beet skins and grate roasted beets into a mixing bowl.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F
- In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. This is the dry mix.
- Whisk sugar and eggs together in a third, large bowl until the sugar is fully dissolved and the mixture becomes pale. Mix in oil, yogurt and the grated beets. This is the wet mix.
- Pour the dry mix into the wet mix, and fold together until combined. Do not overmix.
- Pour half the batter into a clean mixing bowl. Fold in the cocoa powder.
- Scoop the batter into a well-oiled 9x5 loaf pan, alternating scoops from the beet batter and the chocolate batter. Use a skewer to swirl the different batters together. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes. The bread should be golden brown and pulling away from the sides of the pan.
- Let bread cool in the pan for approximately 20 minutes before removing from the pan. Allow bread to cool completely before slicing (it will crumble and collapse if you try to cut it too early).
