Are you a sucker for the traditional apple and rhubarb crumble to top off a meal? Or maybe you grow your own rhubarb in your vegie patch and have a glut you need to use up. Either way, there are plenty of ways you can use rhubarb in your desserts. Take this upside-down rhubarb and marmalade cake, developed by Kerrie Worner for Home Beautiful for example. It’s easy to make and delicious to boot.
But here is where we add the native food twist! You simply line the base with rhubarb (which becomes the top!) and finish off with a drizzling of warm, sticky, delicious (NOT marmalade) Rhubarb and Lemon Aspen Relish and a dollop of cream. Now that may sound odd, but trust us on this, it’s divine! And we love cakes made with buttermilk too! It’s perfect for your next afternoon tea or dinner dessert with friends or family
Serves 8
Ingredients
¹⁄ ³ cup Outback Spirit Rhubarb and Lemon Aspen Relish
½ cup boiling water
1¹⁄ ³ cups caster sugar
1 bunch thin-stemmed rhubarb, trimmed, rinsed
2 cups self-raising flour
½ cup (85g) almond meal
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
160g unsalted butter, melted, cooled
Softly whipped cream, to serve
Grease and line base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin (preferably not a springform tin ) with baking paper, leaving paper to overhang the top of tin. Preheat oven to 180°C. Whisk half of the marmalade and 2 tablespoons each of the water and sugar in a jug until dissolved. A couple of hints here:
· If you don’t have a sold based cake tine of this size, you can use the springform tin but when it comes the hot Rhubarb and Lemon Aspen Relish, sit the warm cake on a cake stand , the metal mesh kind , out of the tin. Place this on a tray with sides. Apply the Rhubarb and Lemon Aspen Syrup and leave for a few hours. The excess will pool underneath the cake, and you can pop it back into a small saucepan, add a tiny amount of water and bring back to the boil and re-apply to the cake.
· Before you apply the Rhubarb and Lemon Aspen Syrup to the cooked cake, use a skewer and push it into the cake several times, but be careful not to pierce the cake’s base. This will allow the syrup to penetrate the cake. Don’t forget to catch the syrup and re-apply.
· This is not Kerrie’s method, but it is a great method for a syrup cake and lets you make the cake if all you have are springform pans.
For solid based cake tins:
Pour mixture over the base of tin. ( do not try to do this with springform pans – see instructions above) Cut rhubarb into lengths to fit snugly side by side in the base of the tin. Place remaining rhubarb on top of first row, in the same direction.
Sift flour into a large bowl. Add almond meal and 1 cup of the caster sugar and stir to combine. Whisk together buttermilk, eggs and butter. Add to dry ingredients and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth.
Pour mixture over rhubarb and smooth the top. Bake for 65 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Stand for 30 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack on an oven tray.
Put remaining Relish, hot water and caster sugar in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and whisk until sugar dissolves. Simmer for 2½ – 3 minutes or until thick. Pour this Rhubarb and Lemon Aspen Relish over the cake and allow to cool. Serve with whipped cream, crème anglaise for a dessert, whipped mascarpone or clotted cream!