Recipes Discovered - Recipes

Read my review of this recipe.

Ingredients:

For the rhubarb filling:

• 1/2 pound rhubarb, trimmed
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

For the crumbs:

• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, melted
• 1 3/4 cups cake flour (I used all-purpose and it worked great)

For the cake:

• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup cake flour (again, the all-purpose flour worked just fine)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons softened butter, cut into 8 pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8-inch-square baking pan. For filling, slice rhubarb 1/2 inch thick and toss with sugar, cornstarch and ginger. Set aside.

To make crumbs, in a large bowl, whisk together sugars, spices, salt and butter until smooth. Stir in flour with a spatula. It will look like a solid dough.

To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula. Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Spoon rhubarb over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over rhubarb; it does not have to be even.

Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake. Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from rhubarb), 45 to 55 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

Nutrition:

Substitutions:

I doubled the recipe and made it in a 9×13 pan, which took about 60 minutes to bake. It needs to be fairly brown on top before it’s done. Also, the rhubarb made quite a bit of juice while it sat. I’m not sure if all of that was supposed to be added to the cake or not. I did add it, but had second thoughts about it. The cake turned out fine, but maybe a little on the wet side. I will try mixing the rhubarb right before I add it to the cake next time.

I tried making this cake with blueberries (reduced the sugar to 1 tablespoon and omitted the ginger). For some reason, the cake turned out very differently. I made it twice with the rhubarb with great results, so Im not sure why the blueberry version failed. With blueberries just starting to ripen, Im sure I will try it again.

Recipe courtesy of Smitten Kitchen.