Rhubarb - Two More Ways

With plentiful spring rhubarb from our gardens, we've made two more rhubarb desserts in addition to the rhubarb upside down cake that I made for Mother's Day. I had extra fresh rhubarb that my mum had brought to me and I decided to try making some rhubarb bars to take to my sister. They were easy to make and were quite like a coffee cake that is traditionally made with a brown sugar crumb topping or sometimes with fruit, like blueberries. This was all rhubarb and while it wasn't my favorite creation or even my choice use of rhubarb, it was a good way to use the extra and turned out quite tasty.

The recipe indicated using butter and parchment for the pan and leaving a few inches of extra parchment on either side to end up with handles to take the bars out of the pan after baking. This was a great idea, but we'll see if it works.

I made a simple crumb topping with butter and blended it with a pastry cutter.

I weighed out my rhubarb and this was mixed with flour and sugar.

I simply forgot to capture anything about the cake batter, but there was indeed a cake batter that went first in the pan, the rhubarb mixture was next and then the crumb topping was sprinkled on top.

The topping was golden and crispy when it came out of the oven.

The handles worked! I lifted the entire pan out to set down and cut the bars. We all thought they tasted good, but could have used even more rhubarb as there was a lot of the crumb topping on them.

Since my sister also had a lot of rhubarb in her garden, she decided to try another rhubarb dessert while we visited. She made these yummy rhubarb custards. They turned out very good and reminded me of the rhubarb custard pie that my mum has always made. Ok, that's enough rhubarb for a while!

Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

Prior to Mother's Day, I gave my mum several different dessert choices including some of her favorite flavors - lemon, cheesecakes, meringues with berries and a few different rhubarb desserts. She chose the rhubarb upside down cake and it's good timing with rhubarb being in season right now. I do have some rhubarb growing at our place, but her rhubarb plants are much more mature. She brought down a few pounds of rhubarb last week and I returned the favor with a rhubarb cake for Mother's Day.

I measured out a little over a pound of nice red rhubarb as I needed about a pound of rhubarb for the recipe after it was trimmed and cut.

I tossed the rhubarb with sugar to get its juices flowing and made a crumb topping with butter, flour and sugar.

Little cubes of butter went in the bottom of the cake pan for the rhubarb to cook in and the rhubarb-sugar mixture went in amongst the butter.

The cake batter was easy to make and was a nice thick and creamy batter that included sour cream, which added a little bite to the flavor of the cake. It also had some fresh orange juice (only a tablespoon) and a little orange zest that gave it such a fresh flavor.

The batter went in the cake pan on top of the rhubarb and the crumb topping was sprinkled on top.

After an hour in the oven, we had a perfectly cooked cake with a crunchy crumb topping (which actually ends up on the bottom).

Here is the cake with the right side up and the soft cooked rhubarb on top.

The cake was so nice and moist and it would be flavorful enough on its own. But, with an English mum, I just had to make custard sauce to pour on top. We enjoyed the cake with juicy sweet rhubarb, dense flavorful cake, crunch from the crumb topping on the bottom and drenched in warm custard. Mum loved it and I sent a few extra pieces home with her.