Rhubarb Cake with Lemon Sauce (serves 8-10)

Rhubarb Cake with Lemon Sauce by The Fat Foodie

I baked this rhubarb cake with lemon sauce after I’d been given a couple of handfuls of fresh rhubarb stalks from my Dad. I had intended on making a rhubarb tatin (much like the quintessential apple tart tatin), but I couldn’t be bothered waiting for my gluten-free puff pastry to defrost, so I just made it into a cake instead. I’ll get around to the rhubarb tatin some time…

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Banana Rhubarb Cakes (makes 12)

Banana Rhubarb Cakes by The Fat Foodie

Rhubarb is abundant at the moment, not just in our gardens, but in the supermarkets too so I couldn’t resist using it again to bake a sweet treat. The tart nature of rhubarb needs a very sweet counterweight ingredient that makes its natural tartness sing and I can’t think of a better fruit that is bursting with natural sugars than bananas. At first I wasn’t quite sure whether the flavour combination would work, but it most certainly does, producing banana rhubarb cakes that are just the right level of sweet and sharp.

Ripe bananas (i.e bananas which are very yellow and have brown spots on them) are high  FODMAP, so don’t use them for these banana rhubarb cakes. However, firm bananas (yellow and firm with no spots) are low FODMAP, so use this type. This recipe for banana rhubarb cakes makes at least 12 cakes, with a serving of one cake being low FODMAP. The banana rhubarb cakes are also enhanced by the inclusion of some chopped strawberries I had at hand that needed to be used up. The strawberry is a nice addition to the mixture because the fruit naturally breaks down during the cooking process to become soft, sweet and jammy fruity little nuggets that are peppered throughout the cake batter.

I thought I’d take these banana rhubarb cakes into work tomorrow and had originally planned to just bake one large cake in a standard cake tin, but I’ve noticed that when I take a whole cake into work my colleagues seem to be reluctant to cut a slice for themselves, whereas if I bring in individual cakes they get munched quickly. (Is it the politeness factor or do the cakes simply look more alluring as individual cupcakes?) Taking this into consideration, I baked my banana rhubarb cakes in my silicone bundt cases, but it’s not essential because they’d be fine baked in normal cupcakes cases too.

This is a fairly easy cake recipe to make. Aside from letting the chopped rhubarb and strawberries macerate in the sugar, cinnamon and ginger, it’s simply a case of mixing the wet and dry ingredients together and then spooning the mix into cupcake or bundt cases. Although it’s simple, it’s still a deliciously complex-flavoured cake though, seeing sharp rhubarb being tempered by the sugary-sweet banana, moist little chunks of strawberry and a zingy lime icing drizzle. A perfect cake to celebrate early summer’s bounty.

Ingredients:

150g of gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)

1 tsp xanthan gum

140g white sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 eggs

2 small firm bananas

125ml vegetable oil

50ml rice milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the rhubarb:

2 – 3 cups of rhubarb (chopped into pretty small chunks)

1 cup of chopped strawberries (chopped into pretty small chunks)

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

100g white sugar

For the icing:

1 tbsp lime juice

1/4 tsp green food colouring

6 heaped tbsps of icing sugar

Method:

Cut your rhubarb and strawberries into small chunks and place in a large bowl. Scatter the white sugar, cinnamon and ginger over the fruit, stir well and leave to one side.

Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas mark 6.

Lay your cupcake cases into a muffin tray or place your silicone bundt cases onto a couple of baking trays.

Measure your bananas and wet ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients and the fruit and mix well.

Spoon the cake mixture into the cake cases and bake for 30 -35 mins. (Ordinarily I’d say that when a skewer pushed into the centre of the cake comes out clean it’s done, but the fruit will be very moist and will possibly give a false result, so just trust your instincts on this one!)

Remove from the oven and leave to cool before drizzling with the lime icing.

Banana Rhubarb Cakes by The Fat Foodie

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Rhubarb and Ginger Cake (serves 8-10)

Rhubarb and Ginger Cake by The Fat Foodie

This rhubarb and ginger cake is one of those delightful ‘chuck all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix’ jobs, a cake baking technique that’s a firm favourite with me. I’ve written before about the ‘generosity’ of gardeners in their ‘donating’ of rhubarb to me and with the turn of spring this year has turned out to be no different. (I jest, of course.) My Dad gave me a lovely bunch of lurid, thin pink rhubarb stalks the other day and although I’d been debating about making them into a jam, after flicking through Emma Hatcher’s The FODMAP Friendly Kitchen Cookbook I decided to try making her rhubarb polenta cake.

It would be more accurate for me to describe this as a variation of Emma’s recipe because I made quite a few changes, the most important of which was adding a generous amount of ground ginger. I always think that rhubarb and ginger marry well together. My aunt and uncle who are both avid allotment gardeners make a delicious rhubarb and ginger jam that’s to die for. In fact, if you try to steal some from my Dad you run the risk of death, so it really is ‘to die for’. Worth it though…

When I read that the flour base of this rhubarb and ginger cake was polenta, ground almonds and gluten-free flour I strongly suspected that the cake would be dry and tasteless, but from the minute I started mixing the cake together I could see that this assumption was very wrong. It mixed together like a ‘normal’ cake would without the granular texture I’ve come to expect from gluten-free cakes and baked very well indeed.

The base ingredients of this cake work so well that this could easily become my go-to gluten-free cake mix to use with other flavours. Accordingly, the finished product is a light, moist vanilla-scented cake that’s generously dotted with little chunks of soft, tart rhubarb and complemented by the warming presence of the ground ginger. The rhubarb and ginger cake is beautiful on its own, but I think it would lend itself well to a dollop of crème fraîche or a dairy-free equivalent. However you serve it, I guarantee it’ll be well received by all.

Also, if you want to try the original recipe from Emma’s book you can find it online on her publisher’s website here at Yellow Kite Books.

Ingredients:

120g fine polenta meal

75g ground almonds

50g gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F Plain Flour)

3 tsps ground ginger

2 tsps xanthan gum

2 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

150g sugar

120ml vegetable oil

120ml rice milk

1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

120g rhubarb (chopped into small pieces)

Method:

Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas mark 6.

Prepare an 8″ cake tin with greaseproof paper or a cake tin liner (a wonderful invention which makes cake baking infinitely easier than having to cut out circles of greaseproof paper to fit your tins!).

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces.

Measure the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and give it a good stir so that they’re all fully mixed.

Measure the wet ingredients into a jug or bowl.

Toss the rhubarb in the dry ingredients and then add the wet mixture and stir really well.

Pour into your cake tin and bake for 35 to 40 mins or until a skewer pushed into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Leave to cool and then serve.

Rhubarb and Ginger Cake by The Fat Foodie

Rhubarb and Ginger Cake by The Fat Foodie

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Rhubarb and Lime Cake

Rhubarb and Lime Cake (serves 8-10)

Rhubarb and Lime Cake

Rhubarb and Lime Cake

My previous blog post discussed the beauty that is rhubarb and gave a recipe for rhubarb compote. I’ve still got quite a bit of compote left over (it keeps for a good week or more in the fridge) so I was searching for things to make with it. I’ve already baked a rhubarb and stem ginger crumble with this year’s harvest so after a quick peek in the cupboards I decided to bake a rhubarb and lime cake.

It turned out to be a very tasty combination, with the flavour of the two acidic, tart fruits marrying well within the sugar-sweetened sponge. Swirling the compote onto the rhubarb and lime cake mix prior to baking creates a sweet sticky crust on the top and as the sugary rhubarb sinks down through the cake it forms a moist layer of fruit in the middle.

If the notion took you, it’d be easy to add some vanilla extract or ground ginger or cinnamon to your rhubarb and lime cake sponge mix, but I think it’s just fine as it is. Keeping it simple lets the rhubarb sing and what a pretty song it is.

Ingredients:

200g butter (or non-dairy version)

175g sugar

3 eggs

200g gluten-free self-raising flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)

1 tsp xanthan gum

The grated zest of 1 lime

The juice of ½ a lime

4 tbsps. of rhubarb compote

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/Gas 4.

Grease or line a loaf tin.

In a mixing bowl, cream your butter and sugar together and then add in your eggs and mix.

Add the lime zest and lime juice and mix.

Add the flour and mix together. (Gluten-free flour is notoriously dry, so if you feel the cake mix needs a little liquid then just add a little milk or rice milk to loosen it.)

Pour the mix into the prepared loaf tin and level off.

Put the rhubarb compote on the top of the cake and loosely mix it into the top of the cake mixture.

Bake it in the oven for 40-50 mins or until a skewer pushed into the centre comes out completely clean.

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