Rhubarb and Custard Cake

Quite a while ago I came across a recipe for a Rhubarb and Custard cake in an issue of Good Food magazine.  The picture looked great and the idea really intrigued me so I decided to give it a go and boy was I glad I did, the cake was gorgeous; moist but light, flavoursome and really really moreish!  It has since become a family favourite and now whenever I see some rhubarb on offer or reduced I have to snap it up for this cake (this means that I usually have several tubs of ready cooked rhubarb in my freezer just waiting to be turned into a cake).  The recipe can also be found online.

The first thing you need to do to make this cake is to cook your rhubarb (in the recipe this is called Barney’s Rhubarb, but I have no idea who Barney is!).  The recipe calls for 400g, but I find more often than not that the pack size when I buy rhubarb is 500g so I just cook the lot.  It needs to be cut into 2/3in pieces and tossed in 50g of caster sugar in a roasting dish.  Cover the dish in foil and then roast the rhubarb in the oven at 200C for 15 minutes before removing the foil and roasting for a further 5 minutes.  The rhubarb then needs to be cooled before being using the cake so it’s best to do this in advance (and it can be frozen and kept for later as mentioned above!)

The cake itself is really easy to make, it’s another ‘everything in at once’ wonder!  So into a lovely big bowl you put 250g of butter (or stork!), 250g of self raising flour, ½ tsp of baking powder, 250g of golden caster sugar, 1tsp of vanilla extract,  4 large eggs (if you only have medium eggs you can stick a little more custard in and it works fine) and finally the contents of an 150g pot of readymade custard, minus three tablespoons which you need for later (I’m not sure how much goes in the cake mix, I would guess somewhere around 100g?).

All the cake batter ingredients

Then it’s just up to the whisk to do the work, start of gently and then turn up the speed until you have a smooth mixture.

the mixed batter

All that’s left to do then is assemble the cake.  Take a nice deep tin and place one third of the baking mixture inside.  Top this with a third of the rhubarb scattered around and then cover with another third of the mixture and another third of rhubarb.

layering the cake, distributing rhubarb

layering the cake, adding more cake mix

Cover this with the final third of the cake mix and arrange the last of the rhubarb before dotting the reserved three tablespoons of custard around.  The cake is now ready to go in the oven.

Topped with rhubarb and custard and ready to go in the oven

You need to bake the cake uncovered for 40 minute at 180C before covering it with foil and returning to the oven for another 20 minutes (it can sometimes take a little longer so check the middle with a skewer).  When it’s cooked allow it to cool in the tin before revealing it to the world and watching it be demolished.

The cooked cake

The cake does keep really well, staying moist for about 4 or 5 days, but I find it’s rare to have any left for that long….

The final cake

Tags: Barney's Rhubarb, bbc, Cake, custard, golden caster sugar, good food, rhubarb, vanilla extract, yummy