So, just 2 weeks ago Saturday, the high was 54°, and one week ago it was blissful 72°. Today the high is predicted to be 89°, but I bet it goes higher than that, because yesterday it was 90°. Mark’s got the AC on upstairs and I don’t blame him.
I don’t even get my first CSA box until next week, because it’s been such a cold late spring, and even though it feels like dog days, we’re still getting spring veggies (and fruits) in our boxes – rhubarb, spinach, asparagus. People on our new facebook group for CSA members are exchanging rhubarb recipes, and last night I tried this upside down, right side up, rhubarb cake. I used this version, but evidently it’s based on a Martha.
I’ve always been more of a rhubarb muffin (another recipe to move over to new & improved, I see … I actually have THREE rhubarb muffin recipes on my old recipe list, but see if you can find them)
Rhubarb muffins
or pie or crisp or cobbler type of baker – even the internetz says so, plus I added a few older shots for good measure:
Rhubarb strawberry cobbler – the strawberry is jam in the biscuit topping; the rhubarb is underneath
Rhubarb hand pies
But I thought this cake sounded interesting. It’s got the rhubarb cooked on the bottom with sugar, standard for upside down cakes, but then it has a streusel topping that winds up on the bottom when you turn the cake out, and, if you cool it on a rack – or in the pan – stays crunchy.
But it has the problem of every other rhubarb cake I’ve tried with the rhubarb in sticks – they slide off when you try to cut off your bite. Plus these got a little tough in places.
Maybe I messed the cake up a little because I baked it right before we went to the movies last night, and so I unloosed the sides of the springform while it was still really hot, and left it to cool. A lot of rhubarb syrup poured out and it sort of sank. I didn’t invert the cake until like 3 hours later when we got home, since Solo that we went to see is almost 2 1/2 hours long – that makes it not quite a serious film I guess, and justifies its status as a summer popcorn movie. It was fun, BTW – good job of filling in the back story, priming the legend, established in later Star Wars movies. The rhubarb topping came off the parchment-lined springform bottom reasonably well, and I scraped up as much of the syrup as I could and painted it back onto the top of the cake.
Anyways, I like the idea of this cake, but if I make it again, I’m chopping the rhubarb.
Maybe I’m just having a problem with stuff not working as expected – first thing this morning when I started this post, sitting at my home desktop computer I was having trouble focusing in my new, pricey eyeglasses …
They seem OK now.
And my new coffee maker, that I’ve been coveting since the old one cracked back in November and it’s too old for a replacement pot, seems way too tall for 5 cups – but of course, that’s where the filter sits. I held off buying it till I found it for $69 on Amazon; $139 for a coffee maker was way too much.
