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.