Cookbook of the week - Tender Vol. I

    We're cooking with Nigel Slater again, but this week from his whopping Tender: Volume I, A cook and his vegetable patch. What you see here is a truly excellent cake, a real revelation: Beetroot Seed Cake. Now please, beetroot-haters, don't rush off; stay and hear more and perhaps I shall convince you to try it.

    "This tastes no more of beetroot than a carrot cake tastes of carrots, yet it has a similar warm earthiness to it. It is less sugary than most cakes and the scented icing I drizzle over it is purely optional," says Nigel.

    Some ingredients: cinnamon, sultanas, mixed seeds (I'd toast them first, next time), that marvellous grated beetroot ... it's quite scrumptious. As to the icing, Nigel suggests making it with lemon juice or orange flower water but I used rose water as that's what I had and I'd do so again.

    There were a lot of sceptical comments from my family as I was making this cake, but they had to eat their words in the end as they find they love it, and even the extremely anti-beetroot Mr. C. wants more of it, so if you have the book, do try the recipe.