Rhubarb and Custard Cake

I realised with a jolt last week that I hadn't looked at Pinterest for weeks, months actually.  For someone who has been known to fritter away hours of the day 'pinning' fabulous cooking/decorating/craft/clothing ideas, this is quite a change... But I've decided that I can only maintain one internet addiction during Ted's nap-times, and Facebook has won that competition!  However, some 'pins' have stuck in my mind, and when I saw some lovely pink stalks of Hampshire rhubarb in the shops last week, I had a sudden recollection of a beautiful looking recipe that I had seen and pinned, so I bought them.

And here it is:

Not only does the cake look gorgeous, I love the way that this blogger (eat, little bird) has presented it, so appealing.

Anyway, I set about making it as soon as I got home.  The cake batter is extremely thick but I suppose that this helps to 'support' the thick layer of custard that you put into the middle.  I also stewed the rhubarb that I had leftover from patterning the top of the cake, and put a fruity layer in the pan on top of the custard.  I ended up using my dampened hands to mould the top layer of cake batter so I could just place it in the tin on top of the custard and rhubarb. 

It looked beautiful before baking...  but not quite so attractive afterwards!!

However, as we all know, it's the taste that counts, and this tasted...  OK.  If I made it again I'd definitely make a couple of changes: 

- Add an extra egg to the cake batter.  It's a very dense cake and I think some more liquid would loosen it up a bit and make the cake a bit lighter. 

- Not make the custard filling too thick.  I made the rookie error of using a giant tablespoon to measure out the custard powder when I was making the filling.  I should have used a proper 15ml measure.  My fault.

- Don't over-bake it.  Again, my fault, but in my defence it's quite hard to tell if it's done as a cake-tester will inevitably hit the custard filling and come up looking like it has uncooked batter on it.

My extra rhubarb layer was a good plan, as the sticks on top just aren't enough - but I love rhubarb!

I have just seen a variation of this cake on Facebook, where apple has been used in place of the rhubarb, with excellent results.  I think I will definitely try that in the Autumn when we are always awash with apples.

I'm glad I tried it, but will refine it a little when I bake it again.

Rhubarb Kuchen

Breakfast Baking.  Something I can rarely be bothered to do - I'd always rather plump for an extra half-hour in bed, and settle for a bowl of cereal.  But last weekend was different.  The weather was hot, really hot, and somehow as soon as I woke up and saw the sun shining outside, I couldn't stay in bed.  On Saturday morning we ate breakfast in the garden, enjoying the sunshine before it got too warm (yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I am still in England!), and this set me thinking that breakfast in the sun is a great occasion and should be celebrated.

Finding some slightly out-of-date packets of dried yeast, plus feeling guilty about the rhubarb that was languishing in the bottom of the fridge spurred me on to search through How to Be a Domestic Goddess, my favourite Nigella book...  I had a recollection of some kind of yeasted cake, or sweet bread, that used rhubarb - and there it was.

Kuchen is German for 'cake' but this is really a hybrid cake/bread recipe.  I did as Nigella suggested and made up the rich dough recipe the night before, leaving it in the fridge to rise slowly overnight.  I was a bit sceptical that this would work actually, but sure enough in the morning it had doubled in size.  I brought it out of the fridge, pressed it into the tin and left it to come up to room temperature while I made the topping.  The dough becomes easier to stretch as it warms up, so I didn't force it while it was fridge-cold.

I didn't have quite the required weight of rhubarb, so added some strawberries to make it up - rhubarb and strawberry are a great combination of flavours.

I also didn't want to make the crumble topping (just one step too far on a Sunday morning!) so sprinkled over some flaked almonds instead.

A mere hour or so after getting out of bed, this was baked and ready to eat.  The dough was browned and puffy, and the fruits had oozed their sugary juices over the kuchen and into the pan. 

 And perfect with a cup of coffee in the garden (pyjamas obligatory!).

The recipe, if you don't have the book, is as follows:

Rhubarb Crumble Kuchen (serves 8)

Dough:
350-400g strong white flour
½ teaspoon salt
50g caster sugar
3 ½g easy blend yeast (half a sachet), or 7g fresh yeast
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
grated zest of ½ a lemon (I omitted this, with no ill effects)
good grating of fresh nutmeg
125ml milk, warmed
50g unsalted butter, softened


Topping:
1 large egg
1 tablespoon cream
grating of fresh nutmeg
350g trimmed rhubarb, finely chopped (I had just less than 300g rhubarb and made up the weight with strawberries, also finely chopped)
75g caster sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
¼ teaspoon allspice (I omitted this)


Crumble topping:
30g unsalted butter, cold and diced
50g self raising flour
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 tablespoon demerara sugar

Put 350g of the flour in a bowl with the salt, sugar and yeast. beat the eggs and add them, with the vanilla, lemon zest and nutmeg, to the lukewarm milk. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a medium soft dough, being prepared to add more flour as necessary. Nigella says she generally uses 400g but advises you start off with the smaller amount and just add extra as needed. Work in the soft butter and knead by hand for about 10 minutes (or using the dough-hook in the KitchenAid for about 5 minutes as I did).

When the dough is ready it will appear smoother and springier – it suddenly seems to 'plump up to glossy life' as Nigella puts it so eloquently.


Cover with a tea towel and leave until it doubles (1-1¼ hours) or leave to rise slowly in a cold place (the fridge is fine) overnight if you want to have this for breakfast (let the dough come back to room temperature before using it).

Punch down and stretch to line a swiss-roll tin (c30cm x 20cm) which you have lined with greaseproof paper. if you are struggling to get it stretch to fill the tin, leave it to rest for 10 minutes mid-stretch.  Leave to prove for 15-20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 200c.

When the dough is ready, beat the egg and cream together, grate in some nutmeg and brush the mixture over the dough. This gives a gloriously glossy topping to the Kuchen.

Stir the rhubarb together with the sugar and allspice but don’t do this until the last minute as the sugar makes the rhubarb release its water.  Sprinkle the rhubarb-sugar mix over the egg-washed dough.
To make the crumble topping (although flaked almonds are just fine!), rub the cold diced butter into the flour until becomes like sand and then stir in the sugars with a fork.  Top the fruit with the crumble.

Put in the oven for 15 minutes then turn down to 180c and cook for a further 15-20 minutes, until the dough is swelling and golden at the edges and cooked within.

Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for 15 minutes.  Slice and eat, still warm. In your pyjamas.

I can't wait to try this with other fruits!  I think it could work well with many other toppings.  I have a bag of foraged blackberries in the freezer, so I think that will be my next Kuchen, perhaps also with apple as Nigella suggests in this alternative Kuchen recipe.

Rhubarb

Pick Your Own

I have fond childhood memories of 'Pick Your Own' farms. I particularly remember Mum sending my brother and me to pick the strawberries because she had a bad back, so would rather pick fruit standing up. She would head off to pick raspberries while Ben and I would fill our punnets... and our faces... with strawberries! What child is going to complain about that?

So when I realised that there is a PYO farm nearby, I was quickly on the 'phone to find out what was ready for picking. It seems that it's still a little early for raspberries and currants, but I was delighted to hear that they had ripe strawberries and gooseberries, so we headed off for a picking session on Saturday.

Despite being fiendishly prickly, the gooseberries were easy to pick. They were plump and juicy, and the bushes were laden. I love their translucent, stubbly skins.



The strawberries of course necessitated scrabbling about close to the ground, but the reward of pulling back a handful of leaves to find these treasures made the aching back worthwhile.

And obviously there were other rewards too...!

Back at home, I was faced with the reality of nearly 3kg of soft fruit that needed using, and fast. A quick e.mail to Mum gave me the recipe for the Gooseberry and Cinnamon Flan that I remember as a result of those childhood visits to PYO farms, and I also turned some into a compote to accompany elderflower creams (like a very English pannacotta), the recipe for which I discovered in Nigella's How to Eat. (Once the elderflower season is past, these creams can easily be made using cordial, as Australian fellow-blogger Sarah discovered as she was heroically cooking her way through the entire book in a year!)

This still left me with 700g of gooseberries, so I made these into a gooseberry and elderflower jam. The recipe was very simple - equal amounts of fruit and sugar, cooked up with half the amount of water (ie 350ml of water for 700g of fruit and 700g of sugar). Instead of using water, I made up 350ml of elderflower cordial, with about 100ml of cordial and 250ml water. Gooseberries are very high in pectin, so this jam set beautifully. And I think it looks beautiful too, pinkish-orange, gooseberry seeds suspended within.



The strawberries too became jam - strawberry and rhubarb jam to be precise. I struggled to find a recipe for this, but ended up amalgamating several I had found online, one of which being a recent post on David Lebovitz's blog. I used equal weights of these fruits as I had so many strawberries. Both rhubarb and strawberry are low in pectin, so I used a cup of apple juice and the juice of a large lemon to encourage it to set. After much boiling it is still what I would describe as 'soft set' but by no means overly runny. However at one point I was beginning to wonder if I should have followed the advice found in several American versions of this recipe, and added 'Strawberry Jello' to the pan!






I think it must be time for a clotted cream tea...

Rhubarb

More Macarons

It's rhubarb season again! I missed out on buying the first of the luminously pink forced rhubarb this year, but now the greener chunkier stalks are everywhere. I bought some last week, but then discovered that a rhubarb-hating colleague at school had a garden full of it... so now I have a plentiful - and free - supply.



Ever since my recent trip to London, and the excitements of the Laduree shop, I have been itching to try making macarons again. I had a vision of making delicately pale pink beauties, filled with raspberry, or perhaps strawberry jam... but the arrival of my first bunch of rhubarb (and a typically heavy hand with the food colouring) meant that my plans soon changed. Those pale pink macarons will have to wait for the Summer.

I used half of my first batch of rhubarb to make a couple of jars of rhubarb and ginger jam, possibly my favourite of all jams, but something I had only ever bought from the local WI market. Sorry ladies of the Womens' Institute, but I think from now on I'll be making my own! Why does no one tell you that making jam is so easy? Clearly it's a WI conspiracy...

I did tint my macaron batter pink, but on seeing the finished jam decided that a hint of yellow colouring was needed. In my usual lazy fashion I couldn't be bothered to use a teaspoon, just thought I'd tip the bottle and add a mere couple of drops..... and in it gushed. Bright orange macarons! In for a penny... I (more carefully) added some orange oil, reasoning that orange and rhubarb were a perfect partnership. These macarons, once cooked, were delicious, with a taste reminiscent of a childhood sweet. Sherberty, like Refreshers. Gooooooood!



The addition of some lightly gingered buttercream, and a dollop of the rhubarb and ginger jam elevated them to Laduree level (well, nearly) et voila, les macarons parfaits!




The recipe can be found here, in my previous macaron post. My first batch had coloured slightly so the only change that I made to the recipe was to reduce the oven temperature to 120C and increase the cooking time to 15 minutes. These macarons didn't brown at all, and had the bonus of an ever so slightly chewy texture.

These were very popular in the school staffroom too! I am pondering new flavours for my next macaron making session... I'm sure it won't be long before I make them again.

Rhubarb