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.

Rhubarb Cake

The only desserts I like to bake are simple fruit cakes. They’re easy, low-maintenance and fairly light. Why bake huge cakes or batches of cookies for a household of two? My go-to recipes are this apple charlotte (can be made with a variety of fruit), this curd-cheese cake with apples, and, now, this rhubarb cake. The recipe, from the Estonian food blog Nami Nami, caught my eye because it calls for kefir or buttermilk. I love using cultured dairy in baking—it makes cakes more tender and balances excess sweetness.

Here’s my tweaked recipe. The rhubarb is from Witte's Vegetable Farm in Cedarburg, Wis. (at $1.50 per pound, it’s a very good deal).

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1.5 tsp. baking power
100 grams butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs, beaten
200 ml milk, yogurt, kefir or buttermilk (I used 50/50 milk and sour cream)
1 lb. rhubarb, finely diced

Preheat the oven to 370. Mix the dry ingredients (flour through baking powder) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, add the milk ingredients to the butter; mix. Add the eggs and stir well.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients; mix. Fold in the rhubarb. Grease a 10-inch pie pan. Pour the batter into the pan; sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake 50-55 minutes, until the top of the cake is golden-brown and a toothpick or knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

If you like, sprinkle with powered sugar before serving.