I bought some Rhubarb the other day.

It has since then been in the fridge. Staring at me.

I was walking home from work yesterday though, and a sudden thought occurred to me, a previous well loved recipe is for apple cake, and surely rhubarb is pretty similar to apples when it comes to moisture content? I thought I would give it a go. It’s a really simple recipe, taking no time at all to put together (especially if you cheat and use a food processor), and comes out moist and delicious, with a slightly crumbly top.

Rhubarb and Ginger Cake – adapted from Marguerite Patten’s Best British Dishes

Ingredients

For the cake:

350g/12 oz/ 3 cups self raising flour, or plain flour sifted with 3 tsp baking powder

150g/ 5 oz/ 5/8 cups butter

175g/ 6 oz/ 3/4 cups caster or light brown sugar

370g Rhubarb, diced. (about 4 and half stalks)

25g/ 1 oz/ 2 tbsp demerara sugar

1/2 tbsp ground ginger

1 egg

1 tbsp milk

For the topping:

2 tbsp caster sugar

1/4 tsp ground ginger

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350°F/ gas mark 4. Grease and flour, or line, a 20cm/ 8 inch cake tin (I tend to make mine in a silicon loaf tin).

Sift the flour, or flour and baking powder, into a bowl, rub in the butter, add the caster sugar or light brown sugar. (I cheat at this stage and put the flour, butter, and sugar into a food processor and process to crumbs)

Blend the demerara sugar with the ginger and toss the diced rhubarb in this mixture.

Add the flour mixture, mix, and then add the egg and milk

Spoon into the prepared tin, and top with the caster sugar and ginger.

Bake for 1 and 1/4 hours, or until firm. Check the oven after 50 minutes to 1 hour and if the cake is becoming too brown, lower the temperature to 150°C/ 300°F/ gas mark 2.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool….

Done!

I actually made both an apple cake and a rhubarb cake, just so that I could get an estimate for the amount of rhubarb I was going to need, as the original recipe just calls for 2 medium sized cooking apples. This allowed for a bit of a taste comparison between the two at work today and… dare I say it…. the rhubarb cake is actually even better than the apple cake…. Mr M enjoyed it very much too, and I still have some rhubarb staring at me from the fridge…….

Steady on.