Rhubarb and custard cupcakes

Having recently moved my rhubarb into a new position, it has gone crazy! So, as the Wimbledon Ladies’ Final finished disappointing quickly, I had lots of time to try out lots of new recipes to use up my rhubarb!

Having decided to try out a rhubarb and lemon cake, I fancied making something with a Wimbledon theme and so decided on some tennis ball cupcakes. If I were making these for something special, I’d probably have made some more appropriate strawberry and cream flavoured cakes, or maybe even some Pimms flavoured cakes, but as they were just for fun, and I needed to make use of my rhubarb glut, I decided on rhubarb and custard flavoured cupcakes. These also gave me the opportunity to try out my new flavourings from Lakeland.

I followed my standard vanilla cupcake recipe, replacing the vanilla extract with 18 drops of the rhubarb flavouring and filling the cupcakes with rhubarb compote. I replaced the vanilla extract in the buttercream with 15 drops of custard flavouring. The rhubarb flavour did come through gently in the cakes but I think that it could have done with a bit more – I have suggested 20 drops in the recipe below. I’m not completely convinced by the custard flavour – I’m not sure that the custard taste really came through the buttercream – it didn’t taste particularly different to standard vanilla buttercream. I’ll have to try out the flavouring in something else to test this out.

Overall though, I did enjoy these cakes. I wasn’t sure that the grass nozzle (mine came in a set from Lakeland that is incredibly useful!) would give the right effect for the tennis balls, but it worked out pretty well. The cakes tasted good and the slightly sour rhubarb compote was balanced well by the sweet custard buttercream. Will definitely make these again.

Rhubarb and custard cupcakes

Ingredients

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 225g golden castor sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 150g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 125g plain flour, sifted
6. 120ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature
7. 20 drops rhubarb flavouring
8. 300g rhubarb
9. 1-2 tblsp soft brown sugar

Buttercream:

1. 110g butter, at room temperature and very soft
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 15 drops custard flavouring
4. 60ml milk
5. Green and yellow paste food colouring
6. 100g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy this will take at least 5 minutes with an electric hand mixer – don’t rush this stage).
4. Whisk the eggs together in a small bowl.
5. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture, a bit at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition. It should result in a lovely light mousse-like mixture.
6. Combine the two flours in a separate bowl.
7. Combine the milk and rhubarb flavouring in a jug.
8. Add one third of the flours to the creamed mixture and stir gently to combine.
9. Pour in one third of the milk mixture and stir gently.
10. Continue to add flours and then milk mixture alternately, stirring gently after each addition, until all have been added.
11. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases, filling to about 2/3 full (or about 65g each).
12. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until lightly golden brown. The cakes will spring back lightly when touched, if cooked.
13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes, before carefully placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.

While the cakes are in the oven:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, milk, vanilla extract and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the green and yellow food colouring until you reach the desired colour.
4. Put buttercream into a piping bag with a large grass nozzle.
5. Chop the rhubarb into approx. 2cm slices.
6. Place in a small saucepan with a splash of water and 1 tblsp soft brown sugar.
7. Heat gently until the rhubarb is soft.
8. Strain off any juices through a sieve
9. Mash the rhubarb gently and add extra soft brown sugar if needed. 

Once cakes are cooked and cooled:

1. Use a tea spoon to cut a cone out from the centre of the cakes.
2. Cut the top disk off each cone and retain.
3. Fill the hole in each cake with a teaspoon of the prepared rhubarb and then replace a cake disk onto each cake to seal the hole.
4. Pipe short grass-like spikes onto each cupcake until covered.
5. Leave to firm.
6. Mix the icing sugar with a small amount of water until it reaches a toothpaste-like consistency.
7. Place this icing into a piping bag with a small round nozzle.
8. Use a rounded knife to gently draw on the curves of the tennis ball onto each cupcake.
9. Pipe over these curves with the white icing.

Rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake

It’s been over a month since I last wrote a post! To be honest, I haven’t baked much until recently – I was away for much of July and the hot weather meant that it was just too hot to be stuck in the kitchen with the oven going! However, the gorgeous July weather also meant that my rhubarb kept on growing and I did need to bake something to use it up again!

Having not been particularly impressed with the rhubarb and custard cake I made last time, I decided to have a go at a different rhubarb recipe this time: rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake. I found this recipe recommended online and the only change that I made was the addition of the chopped hazelnuts. I love the crunch and the flavour that chopped hazelnuts give to the crumble mixture on my rhubarb crumble muffins and so decided that they would also be a great addition to this recipe.

This recipe is a definite hit! When making, there seemed to be an imbalance between the relatively small amount of cake, reasonable amount of rhubarb and huge amount of crumble, however, once baked, it turned out beautifully. The cake is deliciously moist and fairly tart and the crumble on top is crunchy and sweet. I took this cake into work and it went down a storm! Definitely one that I will be making again!

Update August 2014
Made this delicious cake again last week and I added 15 drops of Lakeland custard flavouring, which added a delicious sweetness to the cake. The cake took a very long time to cook and was very moist still in the middle. I think that the rhubarb gave out too much juice while cooking and so it would probably be a good idea to draw out some of the juices first. I have adapted the recipe below to suggest this. 

Rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake

Ingredients

1. 150g plain flour
2. 125g butter
3. 25g light muscovado sugar
4. 40g chopped hazelnuts
5. 100g marzipan, coarsely grated
6. 100g golden caster sugar
7. 2 free range medium eggs
8. 1tsp baking powder
9. 400g rhubarb, washed & sliced
10. 15 drops custard flavouring (optional)
11. Custard or clotted cream to serve

Method

1. Place the chopped rhubarb in a bowl and coat with 25g caster sugar. 
2. Preheat the oven to 190C.
3. Grease and base line a 20cm deep, loose bottomed cake tin.
4. Prepare the crumble topping: sift half the flour into a bowl and rub in 50g of the butter. Stir in the muscovado sugar, hazelnuts and the marzipan, then set aside.
5. Cream the remaining 75g butter with 75g of the caster sugar until pale.
6. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
7. Sift in the remaining 75g flour with the baking powder and fold in quickly to form a soft batter.
8. Spoon into the prepared cake tin, and spread level.
9. Tip the rhubarb into a sieve to drain away any juices and then scatter the rhubarb onto the creamed mixture.
10. Sprinkle the crumble on top to cover.
11. Bake for 45 minutes, until the top is golden and springy.
12. Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes and then remove from the tin.
13. Serve slices warm or cold with custard or clotted cream.

Rhubarb and custard cake

I’m not much of a gardener, in fact that’s not true – I’m really not a gardener at all. I’m good at wandering around a garden centre and picking out what to grow and pretty pots to grow it in – then it is over to EHH (Ever Hungry Husband – for those who haven’t been following from the start!), who is in charge of planting and general care! Our garden is very much a work in progress so, at the moment, we are mostly sticking to things that can be grown in pots – ideally edible things! Last year’s effort was a bit of a spectacular failure – the never ending rain and general miserable-ness meant that pretty much everything refused to grow – except the rhubarb! Rhubarb seems to love damp and miserable conditions and grew like crazy!

This year, we haven’t even touched the rhubarb – it had just been left from last year, and again, it has sprung up and produced beautiful long red stalks and huge leaves. So, time to start digging out the rhubarb recipes! I absolutely love rhubarb and you really can’t go far wrong with a traditional rhubarb crumble with custard, or simple stewed rhubarb on porridge in the mornings. Looking back, my first blog post was about rhubarb crumble muffins! However, this time, I decided to have a go at a new recipe that I found on the internet: rhubarb and custard cake.

The recipe itself is very simple and (other than the rhubarb) the ingredients are fairly standard stock cupboard ingredients. You can get on with making the cake whilst the rhubarb is cooking.

Unfortunately, there is something about this recipe that just didn’t quite work. It cooked perfectly in the given time – the texture was soft and moist and the general flavour great. However, the custard powder could still be tasted and left a very dry taste and texture in the mouth, which ruined the overall taste of the cake. This won’t be a recipe that I will try again – there are lots more rhubarb (and custard) cake recipes out there to try (including this crumble cake recipe that I made a few weeks ago and I'm sure would adapt well to rhubarb - possibly with strawberries) – and from the way that my rhubarb is growing, I’ll have lots of opportunities to try them out!

Rhubarb and custard cake

Ingredients

1. 200g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into small pieces
2. 50g demerera sugar
3. 150g caster sugar
4. 150g sunflower spread
5. 3 eggs
6. 100g SR flour
7. 100g ground almonds
8. 1/2 tsp almond essence
9. 60g custard powder
10. 25g flaked almonds
11. 1 tbs icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Line the bottom of 20cm loose bottomed baking tin with baking parchment (or use a liner if you have one).
   Place the rhubarb and Demerara sugar in a pan with a tight fitting lid, cover and cook on a med/low heat for 7 mins or until just cooked, stirring occasionally.
3. Cream the spread and caster sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time with 1 tbsp flour with each egg. Beat well after adding each egg.
5. Fold in the flour, ground almonds, almond essence and custard powder.
6. Loosely fold in cooked rhubarb.
7. Spoon into the prepared tin.
8. Scatter over flaked almonds and bake for 45-50 mins.
   Allow to cool in tin.
9. Once cool, remove from tin and dust with icing sugar.

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins

So, have been meaning to start this blog for ages and, having had a very lazy weekend, I finally found the time to set something up. Not sure that this is exactly right yet but it's a start at least! 

The plan is to write up my baking successes (and failures - we all have them - fortunately my husband's work are very happy to eat them!), share great recipes, review cook books (I already have far too many!) and write reviews of the many tea shops that I visit with my husband. Being far too middle-aged for our actual ages, we spend much of our free time pottering around villages, farm shops and garden centres in search of a great piece of cake and perfect cuppa!

Today's batch of baking was made complete with rhubarb grown in our own garden. Nearly everything else that we have attempted to grown this year has been a complete disaster - but, thanks to lots of warm wet weather, the rhubarb has done brilliantly! So today's challenge were rhubarb crumble muffins. I have a recipe cut out from a magazine somewhere, but couldn't find it - so this was a bit of a gamble - adapting a recipe I have for other muffins! But muffins are fairly robust and I've made the original recipe a few times with other fruit so I figured it would be fine. The original recipe was Blackberry and Apple Crumble Muffins, found on the Delicious website. It's a really easy, quick and tasty recipe that I've just adapted slightly.  

Update - June 2013
As the rhubarb is well and truly flourishing again this year, I've just made these again. Thought I would pop a note on here as, this time, I added chopped hazelnuts to the crumble and this addition was fantastic - highly recommended! 

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins:

Ingredients

1. 400g rhubarb (halved lengthwise and then diced)
2. 40g castor sugar

1. 300g plain flour, plus a little extra for dusting
2. 1 tblsp baking powder
3. 1 tsp cinnamon
4. 1 tsp ginger
5. Pinch of salt
6. 190g caster sugar
7. 210ml milk
8. 1 large free-range egg, beaten
9. 100g butter
10. Finely grated zest of 1 large lemon

For the crumble topping

1. 25g butter, at room temperature
2. 25g plain flour
3. 25g demerara sugar
4. 25g oats
5. 15g chopped hazelnuts (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/fan180ºC/gas 6 and line a 12-hole muffin tray with paper muffin cases. 
2. Mix the rhubarb with the 40g of sugar and leave to one side.
3. Melt the 100g of butter and leave to one side to cool slightly.
4. Make the crumble topping. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, hazelnuts and oats and work the mixture with your fingers until it forms nuggets.
5. For the muffins, sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and salt into a mixing bowl and stir in the sugar. In another smaller bowl, beat the milk with the egg, melted butter and lemon zest. 
6. Stir the wet mixture into the flour and sugar mixture until combined. (It’s fine if it’s still a bit lumpy.) 
7. Strain the rhubarb through a sieve to remove any liquid and then stir the rhubarb into the muffin mix. 
8. Spoon the mixture evenly into the paper cases and sprinkle over the crumble topping.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then cool on a wire rack.

These are fab served warm but also freeze really well. I freeze the batch of them and then defrost one at a time for weekend breakfasts – a quick zap in the microwave and they warm up beautifully and taste lovely!