When the garden is full of deliciousness like this, there's nothing nicer than raiding it for ingredients. I don't have green fingers but even I can grow easy stuff like herbs and rhubarb.
You may have seen my recipe for the best apple cake in the world. If not, go and read it, then bake it.
When it comes to summer baking I like to adapt the recipe and make it rhubarbtastic instead. I won't retype the recipe here as it's the same ingredients and same quantities as the apple cake. Just swap the apple for rhubarb, the almond essence for vanilla extract and leave out the sultanas and flaked almonds.
Wash, trim and chop your rhubarb, then pop it in a saucepan with a splash of water and a sprinkling of sugar to simmer for a little while. When it's softened, lay it on top of half the cake mixture like so.
It could probably take double the amount of rhubarb but I didn't want to decimate the crop in the garden.
Put the other half of the mixture on top, bake as per the recipe and then scoff.
Here's a super handy tip for you. Before you do the washing up, go back to the pan that you used to cook down the rhubarb. There should be a nice amount of pink syrup in the bottom. Put it in a wine glass, add Prosecco and enjoy.
But wait, didn't I promise you some cake decorating updates as well? The rhubarb cake isn't the only thing I've made recently. Using my trusty Victoria sponge recipe rather than a sickly sweet cupcake recipe (bah, I loathe the c word), I whizzed these up and then gave into my childhood fondness for colourful decorations. Baby steps and all but behold!
Baking Mad kindly supplied some of the ingredients for this baking session.
