It seemed simple – a general tweet out to the twitterverse asking if anyone knew a chocolate beetroot cake recipe…

I figured I’d at least get some suggestions on where else to look.  All my recipe books had buttermilk in the ingredients and that’s just plain wrong.  And google keeps failing me.

I’d always depended on my Mum’s recipe – and I’d lost it.  Funny thing was, so had she!  So Mum started calling her friends, and I turned to the biggest hivemind I know and tweeted.  I follow quite a few foodies – funny that! – who retweeted my request a few times to spread the question a little wider.

My tweep-in-shining-armour was an English gent who thought his Mum might be able to help and he offered to add my request to his email home.  Well, bless her if she didn’t come through!  Awesome.  A lovely lady called Shelagh on the far side of the world has shared her recipe with a complete stranger in Australia.  And I hope she doesn’t mind, but I’m giving a copy to my Mum in case she never finds where she’s written hers! 😉

I made muffins instead of a cake, as I took it to work for my team to taste.  They never believed me that you can’t taste the beetroot.  Thanks to Shelagh and her travelling son Omar, that’s a save for my recipe collection.

I’m very very grateful.