Golden Beet Coffee Cake
A perfectly sweet shredded golden beet coffee cake with a brown sugar crumb. Think carrot cake, except with beets! Perfect for breakfast, brunch or dessert!
Golden Beet Coffee Cake
Jump to RecipeHere’s a sentence I never thought I would write: A few weeks ago I was thinking about coffee cake.
I think coffee cake is pretty genius because it’s really just a cake. By sticking the word “coffee” on it, we get to eat it for breakfast. Let’s not kid ourselves though… it’s still cake!
To be honest, I don’t really like coffee cake much as a breakfast. It tends to be too sweet for me. I will completely destroy a piece as an afternoon snack or even for dessert with some tea.
So really, I make coffee cake but then never eat it with coffee.
So basically I make cake. Really delicious cake like this Golden Beet Coffee Cake.
This version of (coffee) cake has beets in it and that makes it both beautiful and delicious.
Golden Beet Coffee Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¾ cup unsalted butter soft
- ⅔ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup sour cream
- 1 cup milk
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups grated golden beets 2-3 beets
Crumb:
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ cup butter melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Peel and grate golden beets until you have about 1 ½ cups.
- In a medium bowl, mix together dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt) and toss in shredded beets.
- In a large mixing bowl, add butter and sugar and cream together with a hand mixer. Cream these together until the mixture is light and fluffy.
- Mix in eggs, one at a time, and vanilla. Combine well.
- Mix in sour cream, followed by the dry ingredients, followed by milk. Stir or mix until it’s combined well.
- In a separate bowl, stir together crumb ingredients until well combined.
- Pour batter into a buttered 2 ½ quart baking dish (or you can use an 8×8 baking dish) and top with brown sugar crumb.
- Bake the coffee cake for 60-65 minutes until the coffee cake is golden brown and a tester comes out clean.
- Let coffee cake cool for 15-20 minutes and the slice and serve!
- Leftover coffee cake will keep fine in an airtight container for 3 days.
Nutrition
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Golden Beet Coffee Cake
Beets Me
You might be confused by the beet addition, but I’ll be quick to remind you that carrot cake exists. This is essentially the same thing, but I would argue that beets are a better choice because they are naturally sweet.
I wouldn’t use the red ones though because the color might end up being weird. Golden beets are perfect though. Just peel them and grate them up!
The rest of the coffee cake is pretty standard. I did cut down on the sugar a tiny bit since the beets are a bit sweet also.
As with any cake batter, it helps to cream together the butter and sugar first and then beat in the eggs and vanilla.
Meanwhile, stir together all the dry ingredients and then toss the beets with the dry ingredients. Coating the beet shreds with the dry ingredients helps to make sure they don’t clump together while they bake.
Stir the sour cream, dry bowl, and milk into the creamed butter and your beet coffee cake batter is done!
Baking and Eating
Pour the batter into a buttered 2 1/2 quart baking dish. You could also use an 8×8 baking dish but it’ll be pretty full.
Then mix together the crumb ingredients and sprinkle that on the top of the cake.
Bake this whole dish at 350 degrees F. for 60-65 minutes until it’s golden brown and a tester comes out clean from the center.
The other nice thing about using the beets is that they keep the cake really moist while it bakes.
When the beet coffee cake comes out, give it 20 minutes to cool before slicing and serving. If you cut it too early, it won’t set up completely and you’ll need a spoon to eat it!
The color is just killer on these bars.
Make some coffee cake this weekend and eat it whenever you want. I won’t tell.
Any excuse to cook with beets, right? ;-) Anyway, these sound yummy!
Thanx Nick. I love coffee cake but could never justify the sugar and calories to make it, now I have a very good reason.
Hey Helene, if you’re watching the sugar, I think you could easily cut it down to 1/2 cup and leave off the crumb entirely. The cake is great without the topping. :)
Hey, Nick! I went to your site looking for some good freezer meals (I had a marathon weekend making breakfast burritos, hot pockets and lasagna… it was awesome). I saw this recipe and had to try it. To tell you the truth, I was skeptical. Beets in my sweet breakfast… No way. I was so wrong. This is the best coffee cake I’ve ever made. It was so moist The texture is perfect. It holds together beautifully. And the beet flavor is so weird and SO DELICIOUS. This is going to be a staple in our house during beet season.
I wanted to tell you about one weird thing that happened, though. I started the recipe this morning and realized I was short on butter. I had mixed up the beets and dry ingredients already, and I headed to the store. I was back in less than 20 minutes, but the beets had turned a greenish color. It wasn’t a dark spinach green color or anything too crazy, but those beets had definitely developed a greenish tint. The color of my coffee cake was, therefore, a little weird, and no where close to the gorgeous golden you got, but it was still incredible.
Oh good! I’m glad it came out okay Sarah. On the color… i’m guessing that they just oxidized… I guess green golden beets is the equivalent of browned apples? Haha… shouldn’t affect flavor though as you found out.
If you’ve already shredded the beets, you could make tacos out of them like this:
https://www.macheesmo.com/2014/07/breakfast-sweet-potato-tacos/
Or just add them to a big old salad! Good luck!
Oh, also! Two beets came out to like 4 cups of shredded beets for me… So the 2 – 3 was more than I needed. Any ideas for what I should do with the rest of those gorgeous golden beets?
This looks awesome! I’ve done a chocolate beet cake (with red beets), but love this version. :)
Oh my goodness, coffee cake looks delicious! I’m definitely making this! thanks for sharing!
I was cooking beets today and came up with what I thought was my original idea to try making a Sourcream beet coffeecake. My husband thought I would be wasting my time and beets and I shouldn’t bother. Then I went on line and here it is . . . .already in the making. Can’t wait to try it, even though I thought it would be my own creation.
Ha! Hope it turned out okay Carol. Cheers!