Beet Pie with Sweet Yogurt Topping

A while back, my friend Jessica at OlyMomma tasked me with finding a beet recipe for her anti-beet (though pro-beet green) family. I think she suggested beet cake. No, Jess, I didn't forget! I found beet cupcakes, caramelized beet topping for ice cream, chocolate beet cake, and more. But this recipe particularly intrigued me. I liked that the results were still beet colored and the recipe used mostly what I already had on hand. I did change some things from the original recipe to make the results hopefully more appealing to my anti-beet friends.

Not the best picture, but this was the only way I could get the deep red color to show up.

All the other photos made the pie look black. Yum yum.

Ingredients for the pie:
1 lb. (or so) beets
1/2 T. (or so) lemon juice
1 egg
2 T. heavy cream
1 t. vanilla
3/4 c. packed brown sugar
4 T. flour (I, like the recipe's creator, used whole wheat)
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ground or freshly grated nutmeg
Store-bought graham cracker crust (I cheated and didn't make the hazelnut pie crust that the original baker used, but you can!)

For the yogurt topping:
1/2 c. Greek yogurt (plain)
1/2 c. powdered (confectioner's) sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

I didn't peel the beets, and you don't have to either. Just scrub them really well. Remove any stem remnants from the tops of your beets, remove roots, and compost stems and roots. Chop the beets into 1/2-inch dice. Spread the chopped beets on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (foil would probably work just fine too). Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven, but leave the oven on.

After I took the beets off the parchment, I was left with a work of art that begged to be photographed.

Purée the cooked beets with the lemon juice, egg, heavy cream, and vanilla. Purée just until beets aren't chunky anymore; don't overpurée. The resulting mush won't be totally smooth. I used an immersible blender for the puréeing, and it worked, but a food processor would probably be easier. We don't have one.

Combine the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the beet purée and mix well. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pie crust, smooth it out, and bake it for 30 minutes. Remove the pie. Turn up the oven to 400 degrees F, cover the pie with foil, and bake it for 10 more minutes. Remove and cool, covered, for 30 minutes. Uncover and cool for another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix together the yogurt and powdered sugar until smooth.

Serve slices of pie with dollops of yogurt topping.

Comments:

This was delicious, and we all devoured it. Liam put half of his slice in his mouth all at once, and Annika picked hers up and stuffed it in her face. The yogurt topping was the crowning glory of it all. Even though we all loved it, Steve and I felt that the pie could use a bit more sweetness--particularly if it wasn't absolutely drenched in yogurt topping. So I added some more brown sugar to the recipe (we used only 1/2 c. in our version). You gonna try it, Jessica?