Chocolate Cake Winner

Given my fascination with cakes that have grated vegetables in them, I needed only the tiniest of excuses to get around to making Joy the Baker's chocolate beet cake (as in, I've eaten all my brownies, and have buttermilk to use up). 

Side note: I had leftoever buttermilk after making the buttermilk-basil-lime sorbet from Sprinkle Bakes.  You should totally check out her blog; she is amazing.  

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Anyway, back to the cake.  I made half the recipe, which yielded 10 cupcakes.  While I'm no calorie-counter, I did shy away from the icing called for in the recipe, as it was replete with cream cheese, butter and icing sugar, and I've had a steady diet this summer of brownies and gin cocktails.  This icing consists of a half a cup of icing sugar, and small quantities of softened butter, milk, vanilla, and grated beets.  There wasn't quite enough icing to go round, but it's alright to have a few naked cupcakes.  

And while we're on the topic of Joy the Baker recipe winners?  This crostini is one of the best things I made this summer.  Hurry while there are still decent peaches and tomatoes to be found!

Edited to add:  Since I still had buttermilk to use up, and since I thought that leftover pancakes would be good food to take on a hike (I was not wrong), I subseqently made JTB's buttermilk pancake recipe.  Now, I thought that I knew pancakes (as in, mix together flour, milk, eggs, and a bit of sugar, salt, baking powder and melted butter).  I was wrong.  These are the best pancakes I've ever made.  Pancake epiphany.  Amen.