Dedicated to...Rhubarb

Yes, a whole post dedicated to a vegetable. Cousin to celery, with leaves that are poisonous...who knew veggies could be so awesome?! Rhubarb is just coming into season now (down under) and bunches are looking a much deeper red with chunkier stalks(a technical term, yes). None of this anaemic looking rubbish that I saw over in London's Portobello (sad, but true). I snapped up a humungous bunch over at the Pyrmont Growers Markets on the Easter weekend and went to town (cooked it up). Here are some of the fruits of my labour:

Look, I'm an artiste! Drizzling honey like a champion. Here I've stewed some rhubarb pieces with a tablespoon (or 2 for the sweet toothed) of sugar for around 10 minutes on a low medium heat (you know when it's done when you get the texture that you want). KISS - keep it simple stupid: a few dollops of (full fat!!!) yoghurt with a drizzle of honey is all you need for the rhubarb to work it's tarty magic.

It's a bird, it's a plane...NO, it's a rhubarb bundt cake! Shaped as an UFO, this one is a Rhubarb & Sour Cream cake, a recipe from a friend (thank you!). In order to cope with the significant quantity of rhubarb in the recipe you need to pack in the brown sugar (don't be shy) or the cake will be too tart for most (but i know i can handle it). I think I was slightly over ambitious in trying to use this baking dish because I have significant muffin toppage - nevermind, I actually like the crust. The golden brown colour, I've realised can only be achieved with a decent oven! Too bad my college oven is a POS.

And so my love affair with macro continues - here's a close up shot. Can i just say that the cake tasted pretty darn good. Lucky i cut the oven time so that it was just cooked. Remember kids, whilst the cake is out cooling it is still cooking - something to keep in mind.

It's a strange thing, but I actually quite like desserts or baked goods with vegetables in them. I've made a chocolate and beetroot cake a couple of times which is so rich but so yum. I'll post about it one of these days. Of course there's always the humble carrot cake and pumpkin scone - old stalwarts that never let you down. I'm keen to try some other recipes with rhubarb - maybe a rhubarb/apple/blueberry pie...I have an Australian GT recipe in mind (holy crapola, that looks good). Anyway, that'll do for now. My baking itch has been temporarily scratched ;) Thanks for reading! :D