19 April 2008

Rabarberkaka

I don't think rhubarbs are as popular in Sweden as they are in the UK. In Bulgaria these are called ревен (pronounced reven) and are mostly used as a medicinal plant.
We have rhubarbs in our garden and last year I harvested and froze them and talking to my Mum about what to do with them, she sent me a recipe of a rhubarb cake that she'd had at a friend's house and that she thought was really good. A Swedish rabarberkaka that is. So finally I made it today. In fact I was planning on making it on Wednesday already and had defrosted the rhubarbs, but other things got in the way. I've only had rhubarb cake once many years ago and remember it as very yummy and not enough for seconds.

Ingredients

150 g unsalted butter
250 g fresh rhubarbs
2 tbsp potato flour
3 eggs
3 dl granulated sugar
50 g finely chopped almonds
2.5 dl plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
butter and flour for the cake tin

Now I had 400 g of rhubarbs, which is 1.6 times more than the original recipe, so the amounts I used were

240 g unsalted butter
400 g thawed rhubarbs
3 slightly heaped tbsp cornflour
80 g ground almonds
4 dl plain flour
1.6 tsp baking powder
5 large eggs
5 dl granulated sugar
butter and ground almonds for the cake tin

I also haven't been able to fin potato flour yet, so used cornflour instead.

Method
  1. Melt the butter on low heat and set aside to cool.
  2. Cut the rhubarbs into 1 - 2 cm chunks if using fresh ones and mix well with the potato flour/cornflour.
  3. Butter a cake tin and cover with ground almonds. For my amounts I used my large 13" round tin. Set the oven to pre-heat at 175 degrees C or between gas mark 3 and 4.
  4. Blend the almonds, flour and baking powder thoroughly.
  5. Whisk the eggs and sugar into a pale and fluffy cream. Then slowly add the butter.
  6. Now gradually add the almond flour mixture. The resulting batter should be fairly thick and look a bit lumpy from the almonds.
  7. Finally add the rhubarbs and stir in carefully with a spoon.
  8. Transfer the cake batter into the cake tin and level off the surface as much as possible.
  9. Bake at the lowest level in the oven for 2 hours and 15 minutes and cover with tin foil if it starts going dark.
  10. Serve with custard or vanilla ice cream.

We are going to have it with the clotted cream I made a few days ago. This will run out a lot quicker than the cake, but I have some nice fresh custard to continue with. I think we'll need to invite the neighbours over to help us with the cake, it's very big.

Rhubarb Cake

The original amounts should bake in 60 minutes, but since I almost doubled the amount, baking took a lot longer. It seemed ready after 2 hours, but I gave it 15 minutes extra to be sure. Test the usual way by sticking a skewer through the middle and checking that it comes out clean.

It turned out to be very tasty indeed and was very nice with the home made clotted cream.

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