Sugar Swings! Serve Some: Tri-color Halloween Bundt Cake Colored with Spinach, Sweet Potato and Beets

Friday, September 13, 2013

Tri-color Halloween Bundt Cake Colored with Spinach, Sweet Potato and Beets

So it's that time again when Halloween treats show up in September! Woohoo! Although I kinda object to how soon the seasonal stuff shows up in stores, I do like seeing all the creative treats that get posted on my fav blogs and over at Pinterest of course!

One of my fav things are the Halloween cakes that get baked and decorated up. I especially love the Halloween bundt cakes. You've seen them right? Lots of swirls of green, orange, black, and purple.

I pinned this awesome one ages ago and have seen it all over the place from Cooking With Sugar

And check out this fun one from Easybaked

Or my latest favorite bundt is this Eye of Newt Halloween Cake from Just Dip in Chocolate

And although I absolutely love the colors and how bright and Halloween-y they are, I wanted to see if I could come up with something with a little less artificial coloring. (Note: not that I don't use food coloring and gels. I most definitely do, but I often like to experiment to see what is possible with natural food colors).

This cake is a doctored boxed cake and all the color for the cake come from spinach, sweet potato and beets. Yep spinach, sweet potato, and red beets! And the veggie mix replaces the oil and liquid in the boxed cake directions. Pretty simple actually.

For Green layer:

2 cups of fresh spinach (I used baby spinach)
1/3 cup of applesauce

Add to food processor and blend well.

For Orange layer:

1 small-medium sized sweet potato
1/3 cup of applesauce

Wrap sweet potato in damp paper towel and microwave for about 4 minutes. When you can pierce easily with a fork, remove flesh from skin. Mix with well with the applesauce.

For Chocolate layer:

1 can of whole small red beets with juice.
2 Tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon of chocolate syrup

Add 1/4 cup of beet juice and about 6 small beets to food processor along with cocoa and syrup. Blend well.

You'll get about 1/3 - 1/2 cup of the mashed up veggie mixes

Divide a yellow boxed cake mix evenly (or as best as you can eyeball it) into 3 bowls. Add 1 egg to each along with the 1/3 - 1/2 cup of the vegetable slurries.

Mix well

Add and swirl batters in a bundt pan (spray pan really well with floured baking spray so it releases from pan easily) and bake for about 40 minutes.

unbaked batter - love the colors!

Once baked and cooled, instead of frosting on top, I squirted lines of melted candy melts/wafers in Halloween colors. Before the candy hardened I added some eyes on top to really Halloween it up. The eyes are also made with melted candy melts/wafers. You can buy pre-made edible eyes, but it's really so simple to make them. Pipe a white circle first, then add a little black, let harden. Simple eye balls and if they are not perfect, who cares - lopsided eyes are even better for this.

I had some crushed up chocolate cookies, so added them around the bottom of the cake too.

And that's it! Cut yourself a big ole' hunk since it's filled with veggies.

OK OK, I hear ya, this may not be healthy, since it starts with a boxed cake mix, and has candy on top, but hey any veggies I can get into the kids (and my Dad!) works for me. The colors may not be as bright as those other fun Halloween bundt cakes, but I still like the look.

BTW, you can't taste any veggies in this cake if you were worried about that. It still tastes like yellow cake but just nice and moist - and way more fun than a plain old yellow bundt cake.

Plus aren't vegetables scary to kids? A perfect Halloween spooky cake!

So is it too early for Halloween for you? Are you ready for pumpkin flavored everything?? I'm not really ready, but it's going to come really fast regardless if I'm ready for it or not, so *trying* to go with the flow! Have an AWESOME weekend.

Positive thoughts to those at the Seaside Jersey Shore - they just can't catch a break.

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It