Sunday, which makes it time to cook.
I feel like some cake. Picked up the Womans Weekly 'Cook' book, which is excellent, and it fell open at this one. I'd used it in the past, as you can tell by the quantity adjustment, and must have doubled it to fit into the chosen pan. I'd bought a tub of some Yalla - http://yalla.com.au/ - rhubarb & ginger compote and not finished it yet, so it was languishing in the fridge looking for a new purpose and direction in life.
Working to the doubled recipe, I followed the directions. Well, sort of.
- swapped plain flour for wholemeal in both the base & the top (when I realised that I'd run out of white)
- used a sort of brown granulated sugar (when I realised that I'd run out of caster)
- made the topping in the style of crumble instead of the chilling/grating approach in the recipe
- just used plain flour inthe crumble topping, no self raising
- substituted their fruity middle bit for the 2/3 tub of Yalla rhubarb mix
Beat 200g butter, 1 cup sugar and 2 egg yolks together in the trusty KitchenAid until pale, creamy and well mixed. Next time I will sling in some vanilla at this point too.
Sieved 1.5 cups plain/wholemeal and half a cup self raising flour together along with 2 tbspns custard powder (! how brilliant is that, it's got custard powder in the base. I bet this bit would be quite nice on its own. Perhaps do the original quantity).
Mixed gently together and then pressed into base of greased/floured pan. No baking paper, as I'd run out of patience in the supermarket and had to leave without finishing my shopping list when I kept bumping trolleys repeatedly with a tracksuit attired neanderthal. My fault, entirely, I believe.
The pan is a super heavy Anolon one. It conducts heat brilliantly and gets hotter than the face of the sun as I keep finding out whenever I use too thin a teatowel when I try and hitch it out of the oven. It won't get me this time. I'm wise to it now.
Bake for 20 mins at 180c and then take out of oven to cool for 15 mins.
Make streusel topping now. I blended the 1.5 cups of flour and 160g butter together first, then threw in the 2/3 cup of soft brown sugar. I also added a couple of teaspoons of ground ginger and mixed spice to give it a nice warm depth to the flavour. It turned all lovely and sandy looking. Perhaps the wholemeal flour had something to do with that.
After 15 mins cooling, I spread the rhubarb mix onto the base and covered it evenly with the crumbly topping.
Sprinkled with some caster sugar and then put back into the oven for a further 15 mins. Having re-read the recipe it says to put the heat up for this stage. I didn't.
So pretty! After 15 mins it didn't look quite finished enough so I put it back for a further 5 mins.
It looked fabulous. I thought that it tasted a bit funny, maybe to do with the powerful extra dredging of mixed spice that the topping got. The Loved One thought that it was nice but a bit on the crumbly side. I can see that making the streusel topping the proper way would product a more dense and edibly manageable aspect to it. Maybe you could just combine the crumble topping a bit more until it starts to clump together into lumps.
Comments