This cake is about rhubarb. It is about its tanginess which delicately entwines with the sweetness of the grapefruit-flavored filling. It is about its crispy sugar topping that appears on sticky fruit juices. Please, use as much rhubarb as possible. The rhubarb season is too short to take any compromise.
This cake is created specifically not only for those lazybones who possess only essential cooking tools but also for all fruit lovers who always try to add too many strawberries to their cakes, dancing on the edge of making them underbaked or overly dense. You don’t need a mixer to make this cake. Actually, it requires you not to have it. Using a mixer to beat eggs with sugar would make the batter too airy and liquidy and rhubarb would simply sink in such a batter instead of floating with pride on its surface. Take a piece or two because that is how spring tastes.
Just Rhubarb Cake
23-cm (9-inch) diameter cake tin
1 ½ cup (190 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1 ⅓ cup (280 g) sugar
80 g (3 ounces) melted butter, completely cooled
3 tablespoons thick Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons grapefruit zest
3 tablespoons Aperol
5-6 rhubarb stalks (about 400 g)
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F (top-bottom heating). Lay a 23-cm diameter cake tin with baking paper, then grease with butter, and sprinkle with flour.
2. Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside. In a bigger bowl beat the eggs, egg yolks, and sugar using a whisk (or mix the ingredients for several seconds using a mixer). Add melted butter, yogurt, grapefruit zest, and Aperol and stir together. Add previously prepared flour. Pour the batter into the cake tin.
3. Follow your whims and imagination and cut rhubarb as you like it, but try to make the chunks quite big (those smaller ones may easily get sunk in the batter). Place prepared rhubarb chunks on the batter. Set aside for about 20 minutes to make it more solid. Sprinkle its top with a huge amount of sugar. Bake for about 50-60 minutes, until the toothpick comes out clean.
4. Before you take the baked cake out of the tin, set it aside for about 10 minutes. You can drizzle some honey on the cake’s surface. Make sure to serve the cake with vanilla ice cream – it is a real must.
Tips/advice
1. This cake is for real lazybones. Beating the eggs for too long makes them full of air, and as a consequence makes the whole batter too delicate. In such a light batter, rhubarb simply sinks down – we definitely do not want that. Beat only to combine, preferably using a whisk (if you use a mixer, 30 seconds are enough to combine the ingredients).
2. Rhubarb is the star here. Make sure to add its enormous amount (and do make it look nice). Its sourness contrasts perfectly with the sweetness of the cake. If you do not have Aperol, use rum or vanilla extract instead.
Do not forget to show your piece of art to the world! Post its photo on Instagram and tag me in it, so that I can see it! If you don’t follow my account on Instagram and TikTok, please do it to be always up to date!
Yours,
Rozkoszny
