Finally rhubarb season has rolled around again (yey!), so it's time to get stocked up and get baking. I can never turn down a good old fashioned rhubarb crumble with a huge dollop of custard. Sadly rhubarb has a bit of a bad reputation - many find it a little too sour to be enjoyable and others love it for that reason alone, plus it's a really good source of fibre and vitamins (score!). So to offer something a little different, I thought i'd start the rhubarb baking season with a cake, because everyone loves cake right?!
Like the banana cake recipe, this cake is taken from the 1990 Hometown Collection (I told you it was becoming a favorite) with this particular recipe credited from the Exclusively Rhubarb Cookbook - a charity cookbook from Coventry, Connecticut. Again it's a pretty straight forward recipe and doesn't call for anything you probably don't already have (bar the rhubarb).
So, to the recipe!
You'll need;
- 1/2 cup of butter (softened)
- 1 1/2 cups of white sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 cup of milk
- 3 cups of finely chopped rhubarb - this works out at being about 6 average sized stalks
- Sugar and cinnamon for sprinkling
Cream your butter and after a good mixing, add into your white sugar gradually, finishing off with adding in the egg and mixing well. Seperately add the flour, soda and salt. Alternating with the milk (I should probably add the recipe called for buttermilk but I never have that so go with whatever you have) add the dry mix into the mix. Finally add in the chopped up rhubarb.
Pour the mix into a greased and lined 13 x 9 x 2" baking tray and sprinkle over the cinnamon and sugar - as much or as little as you'd like. Pop the tray into a preheated oven (350F) for 45 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clear.
The result is a lovely moist, surprisingly sweet but with a delightful taste of rhubarb and the cinnamon with sugar topping leaves a crisp warm winter taste in your mouth. The rhubarb does keep the cake a little soggy even after being cooked so it won't last too long but it freezes perfectly so your batch can be happily divided up and saved.