I helped my boyfriend throw a party last month and was rearing to bake some interesting cupcakes, as I hadn't made any since my birthday party in December. I decided to try my recipe for chocolate zucchini cupcakes with pureed roasted beets in place of zucchini -- since it's wintertime and beets are available seasonally but zucchini is not. I also used only 3/4 cup of cocoa powder instead of a full cup because that was all I had on hand. It turns out that missing quarter cup of cocoa powder made a big difference. Instead of having a rich chocolate flavor, they were mildly cocoa tinged, more like these beet oreo cupcakes or these cocoa applesauce muffins. The moral of the story is that beets can be great with chocolate (as with my walnut beet brownies), but make sure there is enough chocolate power to match the earthy sweetness of beets. Also, it's cool to see beets make the batter turn so pretty and jewel-toned. And finally, I topped the cupcakes with coconut frosting, but found that the coconut and beet competed for attention in a distracting way rather than tasting complementary.
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