Another one of my favorite spring vegetables is rhubarb. Rhubarb crisp, rhubarb compote, rhubarb pie, rhubarb muffin. They are all so delicious.
What fascinates me about rhubarb is how beautiful this vegetable looks. It resembles celery but is red. It’s gorgeous. And it’s surprisingly sour. Interesting. As a child I read about rhubarb in British story books but never tried it until we moved back to DC.
Last week end I made rhubarb strawberry crisp for some folks from Los Angeles and Memphis and they had never tried rhubarb or seen the vegetable before.
I was introduced to it at Panera’s. They have a delicious rhubarb strawberry coffee cake and I was hooked. One day I went to get it and was told, they’re done with the season. What?!
Turns out it’s impossible to find fresh rhubarb after spring. So now when rhubarb is in season I make as much rhubarb dessert as I can. Or until I wise up and realize that I cannot keep on eating all my own sweets. Ted doesn’t touch the stuff; it’s too tart for him.
So when we had our final Bible class this week, I decided to try something new. I rarely make cakes because I try n
ot to eat them but I do love the Panera rhubarb coffee cake.
Then I thought of a recipe my sister-in-law Vivian shared with me in the 80s(!) She’d cut it out from the LA Times back in the days we cut out recipes. I think it was called Easy as Pie Apple Cake.
Slices of apples are placed on a pie dish, sugar and cinnamon are added and a simple batter is spread over and baked. Easy peasy. It’s like an upside down cake. But I’m not sure the ingredients make it a cake. And it’s definitely not pie but there’s fruit at the bottom of a pie plate.
Who cares what it qualifies as? It’s surprisingly good. I love the crispy surface, the soft cake-like inside and the juicy, cooked fruit. I used to make this before I mastered making apple pie. People love it.
I’ve been mulling over the idea of replacing the apples with rhubarb and so I gave it a shot. I love rhubarb with strawberry so that’s what I planned for. But when I saw we had a few blueberries languishing in our fridge I threw those in as well. They were starting to look a little wrinkled.
It’s not a pie, and it’s not a cake but it turned out very well. I thought the red coming through the batter looked quite attractive. The blueberries turned out to give a burst of warm juice when you bite into them. A nice surprise.
And it was very easy.
Rhubarb cake
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 10 minutes
3 cups rhubarb, cleaned and sliced
2 cups of strawberries, hulled and sliced
½ cup blueberries (optional)
1⅓ cup sugar
2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup flour
2 eggs
Heat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place rhubarb, strawberries and blueberries in a 9 inch pie dish.
In a small bowl mix ⅓ cup sugar with cinnamon. Set aside 2 teaspoon sugar cinnamon mixture. Sprinkle remaining sugar and cornstarch over fruit. Mix gently.
In a large mixing bowl cream butter with remaining sugar. Add flour and egg and blend well with electric mixer.
Drop batter by the spoonfuls over the fruit and spread to cover. Sprinkle with remaining sugar and cinnamon.
Bake in center of oven for 1 hour 10 mnutes until top of cake turns crisp.
Serve warm, with cream or ice-cream.
NOTES
Spreading the heavy batter is a little sticky to handle. To make it easier therefore drop spoonfuls of the batter over the fruit and then spread it to cover as much of the fruit as you can. I didn’t want the juice coming through in the middle of the cake but juices bubbling from the sides makes it looking very inviting.
You can bake this a day in advance. To reheat, place cake in oven set at 275 degrees and warm for 15 minutes.
