Monday, August 29, 2011

Rhubarb Pudding Cake

I’m always looking to expand my arsenal of simple fruit cake recipes (more on fruit cakes—not the Christmas kind). This recipe is a fast contender for a summer favorite. You beat together some butter, sugar, an egg and flour, and plop the batter over chopped fruit. The recipe calls for rhubarb, but this would work just as well with apples.  The batter spreads as it bakes, creating a cake layer to cover the jammy, pudding-y fruit.

Here’s the recipe, via the Journal Sentinel’s Sunday food section, with a few modifications.

Cube rhubarb or apples into ½-inch chunks—you should have about four cups. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine 1cup flour, 1 ¼ tsp. baking power and 1/8 tsp. salt; set aside. In a big bowl, beat 5 tablespoons unsalted, room-temperate butter with a mixer until smooth. Add 2/3 cups sugar, beat well. Add 1 tsp. vanilla extract, ¼ tsp. cinnamon and 1 egg; beat well. Add the flour and ½ cup milk alternately to the sugar mixture; combine until just smooth.

Butter an 8-inch baking dish and spread the fruit in the dish. Sprinkle with about 2/3 cup sugar (less, maybe ½ cup, if you’re using apples, especially if they’re on the sweeter side). 

Spoon batter over the fruit—don’t worry if it doesn’t cover all the fruit; the batter will spread and plump up while baking. Bake about 45 minutes, and let cool before eating.

Good with whipped cream or ice cream…but who am I kidding, perfect when eaten with a spoon right out of the pan.

3 comments:

piccadillous said...

Is this not pretty much like a Sharlotka? Granted, I haven't made one in ages, so I forget what the ingredients are for that. But the simplicity seems similar.

What funny timing, by the way. I was just looking for a recipe to make something like this with some rhubarb I had. I ended up going with a clafoutis recipe, and it was more of a custard that I ended up with. This would have been perfect. Ohwell!

piccadillous said...

PS: This is totally irrelevant to rhubarb or cake, but I wanted to share that I was finally able to bake more-or-less decent black bread! (You may remember my quest to find a good recipe for simple Russian black bread?)
Turns out that the thing I was most intimidated by, a sourdough starter, isn't that hard to deal with. And here's a picture of my slightly-deflated but still fairly yummy result! You'll find the link to the recipe there too, if you're interested. I recommend it!
http://tinyurl.com/ryebread1

Mrs. M. said...

piccadillious--Nope, this is quite different. Includes 1/4 cup of butter, so it's more rich and, for lack of a better word, cakey.

Thanks for the black bread recipe! I'll check it out...

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