Rhubarb Cake

That sad awkward moment when you think you were eating crumble cake, but you were not.

My discovering (and a little disappointing) experience

    After I started this blog, I decided to make a list on all the sweets and desserts I wanted to try. One of them was the crumble. From my research, I found out that it could be a dessert itself, or that it may be used in cakes, for example.

    Last week, I went to Borough Market, a very famous and absolutely good smelling place here in London, with two friends. My idea was to get at least one dessert from the list and write the review. I ended up choosing a rhubarb cake, which I thought had crumble on the top. Unfortunately, after coming back to my flat and searching for some pictures on-line, I realized the cake didn’t actually have a real crumble on it. Which was quite sad :(

    Anyway, it wasn’t a completely wasted experience. Tasting rhubarb for the first time was quite funny, because I didn’t know what to expect, and I found out it is a very popular ingredient here in England. I don’t think I ever saw a dish in Brazil that uses rhubarb, though. Besides, I ended up loving the cake! :)

Even though it wasn't crumble on top, I totally
reccomend this rhubarb cake! ;)

What is it? And how was it?

   My rhubarb cake had three important parts: the “fake” crumble on top, a sweet dough part, and the filling with rhubarb and custard. Overall, it was very sweet, with a refreshing taste from the rhubarb to balance it off. It also had a lot of different textures: crunchy from the top, soft from the custard and a little stringy on the rhubarb pieces.

   For those (as me) who didn’t know, rhubarb is a plant from the family Polygonaceae and started being considered a fruit in 1947 in the United States. Its culinary use is considered an innovation and the first records about it come from the 17^th century in England. It has become very popular during the 20^th century two world wars and is often stewed with sugar to be used in desserts.

   As for custard, it is a kind of a cream very used in English cookery. It may have different consistencies and added ingredients, but its foundation is simply milk or cream and eggs’ yolks. Usually it has sugar and vanilla on it, making it sweet; but it may also be used in savoury dishes as quiches, for example.

Books, recipes and television

   In my Literature of Food classes, I have already read three different cookbooks so far: “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management” (1861); “A Book of Mediterranean Food” (1950) and “The Alice B Toklas Cookbook” (1954). Unfortunately, only the first and the last one have recipes with rhubarb – I’m guessing it’s not a very common ingredient in Mediterranean cookery, then. Anyway, none of these recipes regard pies or cakes. Mrs. Beeton talks about rhubarb jam, and with her recipe I found out that this plant is usually in season from February to April only. Alice Toklas, on the other hand, offers a similar recipe, but calls it “rhubarb preserve”. I found interesting that both authors recommend using lemons with rhubarb, and a little surprised that they didn’t have any other recipes with rhubarb in their books.

   Then I decided to search for some other books with rhubarb recipes and… Oh my God! I got more than 1200 results in Amazon search for books, and they had any kind of story you’d like to read: children’s books, fiction, medical books, travel books… Anything! That’s when I realized how popular it actually is here in England.

   The first result was “Rhubarb”, by M. H. Van Keuren, published last year. It is a sci-fi book in which a rhubarb recipe takes a very important role on the story. I have also liked “Rhubarb: more than just pies”, which is a cookbook by Sandi Vitt and Michael Hickman that obviously gives exotic recipes for rhubarb. “Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug”, by C. M. Foust, is also worth mentioning, because it seems to explain how this plant started being used in Europe and for which reasons.

   But I have got to admit: my favourite find about rhubarb in British culture was a cute television cartoon from the 1970s called “Roobarb”. It was written by Grange Calveley and animated by Bob Godfrey and  was about the friendly rivalry between Roobarb, a green dog, and Custard, the pink cat from next door. A lovely reminder of my rhubarb cake, I’d say :)

PS: I still don't know exactly what was that thing on the top of my cake, hahaha