Rhubarb and Ginger Cake – recipe

It’s gone a bit rhubarb crazy at Loaf HQ recently. We’ve been harvesting the rhubarb at the allotment, some friends gave us some from their allotment rhubarb as a dinner/borrowing our spare room gift, and I did my first food-barter of the year with local allotment-holder Rob Macpherson, swapping a loaf of Kamut sourdough bread for a load of gorgeous forced rhubarb (see pic below). I softened the bartered rhubarb with brown sugar, orange zest, cinnamon, bay, nutmeg, mace, and star anise, and served it with duck breast and rosemary potatoes (sorry no pic) – very, very nice! Incidentally see the pic below showing the difference in colour between normal and forced rhubarb, amazing!

forced rhubarb2
Rob's forced rhubarb
forced rhubarb
Forced rhubarb left, normal right

Anyway, we still have lots of rhubarb knocking around and today Jane was demanding cake, so I decided to attempt a rhubarb and ginger cake, and here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

4 chunky sticks rhubarb (I used normal, be forced would be ideal)
50g brown sugar
Splash of orange juice
Grated zest of 1 orange
1 tsp ginger powder
150g unsalted butter at room temp
150g caster sugar
3 medium eggs at room temp
200g self raising flour
60g wholemeal flour
1tsp baking powder

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170C/gas mark 4. Chop the rhubarb into one inch chunks and put into a non-stick pan, sprinkle over the ginger powder, orange zest and brown sugar and add a spalsh of orange juice. Cook over a medium heat for 7-10 minutes until the chunks just soften, but don’t totally fall apart.
Whilst it’s cooking beat together the butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric whisk until thoroughly creamed. Add the eggs and beat on full power for three minutes. Now add the flours, baking powder and 200g of the cooked rhubarb (save the rest as a sauce), and gently fold together with a spatula. Pour into a greased 20cm round cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 40-45 mins. Allow to cool on a wire rack and then serve with vanilla ice cream and some of the softened rhubarb – delish!!

rhubarb and ginger cake