Cakey La-Rhu

And so continues my week of cooking with my friend's garden produce. Next up: rhubarb!

I eat a lot of rhubarb, having it every morning on my porridge and sometimes for a snack with some fruit and yoghurt or ice cream, and I pretty much always have some stewed rhubarb sitting in the fridge. I figured this rhubarb deserved a little more special treatment than sitting in my fridge and getting plopped on my porridge, as glamorous as that sounds, so I figured a cake would be in order. As luck would have it, today was my fortnightly research group meeting, and also our department's postgrad meeting, so I wouldn't be forced to eat it all myself. Mind you, as I type this it is afternoon tea o'clock, and I have no cake left. Hmmm.

To find my rhubarb cake recipe I consulted the ever trusty Taste.com.au and although I was tempted by the "Rhubarb Croissant Cake" that involves chopping day-old croissants into pieces and making a cake out of them with stewed rhubarb and thickened cream, I settled on a more standard cake that was rated lots of 5 stars and had comments like "I'm off to buy more rhubarb so I can make it again" whilst 'paddles' declared "abolsutely delicious - this will become a favourite." I guess paddles needs some tasty cake to sustain him after a big kayaking session. Or perhaps some S&M action. I'm not going to judge you, paddles. I was slightly put off by adan119 saying "everyone loved it including the 13 month old" followed up with timmytony's comment that "my whole family love this cake, even the almost 1year old" as I'm not so sure I want to be eating food that very small children find enjoyable, but I decided to take a punt.

After making this cake, I don't think I'd be wasting any on very small children. They can make do with Milk Arrowroots. I really enjoyed the cake, and it went down very well with all tasters this morning! It's quite moist and has a nice denseness to it without being heavy. The batter is thick, so the rhubarb stays well distributed through the cake and the flavours all balance really well. Also great is that you don't need to do anything to the rhubarb before baking it, so it's also quite an easy recipe to follow. Follow in paddles' footsteps, make one today!


Rhubarb Cake
Recipe from taste.com.au

Ingredients
60g butter, softened
1 1/2 cups (300g) brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 eggs
1 cup (150g) plain flour
1 cup (150g) self-raising flour
1 tsp cinnamon
300g sour cream
350g trimmed rhubarb, cut into 2cm lengths
1/4 cup (55g) brown sugar, extra
1 tsp cinnamon, extra

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Lightly grease a 24cm springform pan. Line base and sides with paper, extending paper 3cm above top of pan.
2. Beat butter, sugar, vanilla and zest with an electric mixer until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in sifted dry ingredients and cream in two batches. 3. Fold in rhubarb. Spread mixture into prepared pan and sprinkle evenly with combined extra sugar and cinnamon.
4. Cook for about 1 hour 15 minutes, or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cover top with foil if sugar starts to over brown.
5. Remove cake from pan and cool on wire rack. Cake is delicious served warm or cold with custard or cream ( I didn't bother with this, it was great enough on its own!).

"Help, I'm trapped in a cake and I can't get out" say the funny rhubarby lips