Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes

It takes me being in a lot of pain to convince me to take off my pants at the farmers market. But sometimes you just have to get out there and buy those organic beets even on the busiest day ever. And sometimes that may involve taking off your pants in front of a stranger. I mean you have to make it to the farmers market every Tuesday for fresh veggies if you are the Big Bear Valley’s only pop-up picnic queen and you have a client who just requested organically baked Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes. Maybe I should backtrack a bit to when I still had pants on. It’s hard to think clearly when you are exhausted from working all day in the hot sun, and literally most of your body parts hurt.

I’ve spent the last two weeks of my life helping to detail all glorious thirty-four feet of our motorhome with my boyfriend. And I have a seriously messed up shoulder. How did I mess up my shoulder? I fell on a Snow Pig back in January. That is the simple way to explain it. Then my degenerative disk disease flared up again. Of course, it did. Because I just can’t have nice things. Like a forty-year-old body that does not hurt every damn day. I’m finally, finally enrolled in physical therapy now after getting dicked around by a retarded nurse practitioner who did not even believe I could have had Covid once upon a time back in March because I’m three times vaxxed. That little drama took place a few weeks back in a hick town called Running Springs that I hail from.

This dumb-dumb nurse practitioner with her head in the clouds after many phone calls begging finally, finally submitted my request for PT and now I’m getting ultrasounds and laser treatments for my aching shoulder a few times a week, but I just can’t seem to improve my shoulder. It’s hard when every damn day I’m either cleaning a house covered in so much pollen and dog hair or I’m scrubbing a motorhome and trying so hard not to use my dominant arm. It’s hard to sit still when you are a hyper chipmunk, even if you are injured. So today I had to give in to the hippies and buy CBD cream for pain at the farmers market. I might as well register as a democrat! I also bought a whole hell of a lot of beets to start baking my decadent Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes. But before I could race back home with my beetroot and hippie pain cream I had to embarrass myself at the farmers market, obviously.

I raced to the farmers market after lunch just barely making it to the crazy as usual parking lot at twelve fifty-five when the market ended at one. Even at this late hour, there was one parking spot in the entire lot and some Snow Pig had left their four-year-old child all by herself to save the spot and mommy and daddy were nowhere to be seen. And who leaves a small child to save a parking space like that? I may have muttered something rude at the parents as I drove past them but considering I was wearing a Let’s Go Brandon hat I guess nothing out of my mouth would be surprising. I then just parked on a random hill next to my neighbor’s Jeep because I was just over everything and everyone and my sack hurt. But I’ll get to that.

So what doesn’t hurt?

The guy at the CBD stand asked me what body part hurt and I answered “All of them?” We all had a good laugh, but seriously, what doesn’t hurt after spending the last twelve days scrubbing and waxing and scrubbing again our motorhome all glorious thirty-four feet of her. And that is with my shoulder sack super inflamed, to begin with. Well, my physical therapist said my bursa sack is inflamed and also I should stop telling people my sack hurts.

My sack is inflamed. No seriously

Sometimes you just have to laugh. And make sack jokes. And Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes. And drown your sorrows in said cupcakes. Before I purchased the CBD cream, I did ask if he had a sample as at fifty dollars a bottle, it was pretty pricy. The very nice CBD man put some CBD cream on my shoulder and it did start to tingle and really did seem to feel better. That’s when he asked me where else I was in pain and I admitted my upper hip and before you can say plumbers crack I was pulling down my pants at the farmers market so he could apply my free sample to the biggest part of my fat ass. It actually really helped. So I gave this dude my Am Ex to pay and he asked me if I wanted to leave him a tip. I mean how do you not tip the dude who just put CBD cream on your fat ass totally in public at the farmers market? I only saw one other neighbor while I had my pants pulled down by the way. And of course, the people I yelled at in the parking lot wandered by at that exact moment also.

After I put my pants back on I raced back home because I just had to start boiling these beets and get these muffins in the oven. I really did not want to wait until two p.m. to start on all this baking on such a hot day in a mountain cabin with no air conditioning but what choice did I have?

Beets! Don’t be scared!

Don’t be afraid of beets. I spent most of my life afraid of that earthy beet flavor and you know what I discovered at thirty years old? Beets are a mega delicious superfood! And when I say superfood I do mean that. Do you know that a beet snack can give you as much energy as one of those nasty artificial flavor-filled energy drinks? Think this sounds like fake news? Have you ever seen those FoxNews commercials for SuperBeets? Don’t have any idea what to do with these ruby red root veggies but know you need to add them to your wholesome diet? Check out this recipe for Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes.

One huge thing you have to know when working with beets. Wear old clothes. Trust me. If you are in the kitchen getting creative with beets you are going to end up with ruby red beet stains somewhere. I do so much cooking in my home kitchen, I mean I make my own curries, and salad dressings and bake my own gluten-free baked goods. Most of my clothing is dotted with coconut oil stains. This is why I can’t have nice things. This is actually one of the reasons that purchasing gently used recycled clothing works so well with my lifestyle. I mean let’s face it if I’m not covered with dog hair on a fifteen-mile hike I’m probably in my kitchen stirring a giant wok of Morrocan Lamb Stew. No matter how hard I try, most of my shirts have curry stains on them.

It may be eighty-five degrees in this mountain town but I need some chocolatey goodness after our healthy low-carb dinner. Because you can’t be healthy all the time, right? The secret to baking these Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes in the summertime is to put them in the oven at nine a.m. before it’s hotter than hell outside. This way we don’t heat up our entire mountain cabin and have to go sleep in the motorhome (Where we actually have AC) again. Fun fact; most mountain homes do not have air conditioning. This is why most of my neighbors try not to turn their ovens on between June and September.

I am being so serious when I say these Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes are so decadent for a late evening dessert they are almost worth heating up your home in the summertime. After a late summer evening when I made our cabin so unGodly hot because I just had to bake beet cupcakes my girlfriend and I decided to have a dark chocolate beet cupcake picnic on the boat. Because what else would you expect two wholesome healthy foodies to do after a hike on a summer’s day?

Yes, these Dark Chocolate Beet Cupcakes are so good they are worth heating up our entire mountain cabin on a hot, hot June morning. Obviously, this Norwegian Forest Cat was very impressed.

Dark Chocolate Beet  Cupcakes

2 cups beets, boiled and cooled

3 eggs

1 cup white organic sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 cup almond flour

1 cup coconut flour

1 and 3/4’s  cup good quality dark chocolate baking chips

1/2 cup salted Kerrygold butter plus 4 tablespoons

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Grate the beets. In a saucepan melt the butter, adding the chocolate chips and turn the heat off and stir until the chocolate chips are melted. Stir in the sugars and the vanilla with the pot off the heat. Mix in the beets. Let this chocolatey goodness cool for ten minutes. Mix in the eggs, salt and baking soda. Mix in the two flours last. Pour this mixture into buttered baking tins. Preheat the oven to 350. Bake for 25 minutes.