Rhubarb Custard Cake

I told Mom I bought some rhubarb this weekend and was going to make my favourite cake, the rhubarb custard cake (Molly, I think you're pretty familiar with it). I told Mom I thought I'd brought it to her house one weekend when I still lived in Carbondale, but she didn't remember it, and asked me to post it. I really love rhubarb, and this is one of those super-easy cake mix recipes.

Incidentally, lots of people up here will dip a raw stalk of rhubarb in sugar and eat it out of hand, as a snack. I still haven't tried it, but rhubarb loves the cold, and there's lots of it up here. I may have to start growing some on my land.


Rhubarb Custard Cake

I like to flip over slices and serve like an upside down cake. If you use fresh rhubarb, the rhubarb and cream sink to the bottom to make a “custard”. If you use frozen, the rhubarb will be suspended in the cake, and the presentation won’t be as nice, but it will still taste good.

Oven: 350
Greased and floured 9x13 pan

Ingredients
One boxed yellow cake mix
4 cups chopped rhubarb (buy stalks with as much red as possible; it's sweeter)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 pint whipping cream (2 cups)

Directions
1. Prepare batter for cake mix according to package directions; turn into a greased and floured 9x13" pan.
2. Scatter the chopped rhubarb evenly over cake batter.
3. Sprinkle the sugar on top of the rhubarb.
4. Pour the whipping cream (unwhipped) over the sugar.
5. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes, until cake springs back when lightly touched.
6. Can be served warm or chilled. Store in fridge.

Moving On Up ... To The West Side

We had a slightly shorter ride up to the great North this week-end. Go thing too Grandma doesn't like long rides. With Mark and Bill doing the heavy lifting we got everything done in two trips. It was a nice but exhausting visit. Hoping to have more FUN when we visit again. It's a cute town with a great public shopping square. And believe me, Corn Is King! Molly put Olive to work ironing curtains. Grandma supervised! Bill practiced his circus act.

Folk Fest

Well, Gually and I made it back alive from the Folk Festival. We camped from Wednesday the 9th through Monday, the 14th. This was apparently the worst weather in recent Folk Fest history. It was cloudy Thursday, rainy Friday, gusting wind Saturday, and a beautiful hot day Sunday that suprised and sunburned us all. Saturday was so bad, in fact, that we spent the whole afternoon in the tent instead of at the fest, but we made it out later for the evening program.

Fest favorites were Balkan Beat Box, which is a hip-hoppy take on klesmer, D.J. Rekha with bangra hip-hop, my personal fav Geoff Berner, an accordian player who pleased the crowd with his song about the Vancouver Olympics called, "The dead, dead children were worth it". Mr. Berner prefaced the song with a story about how the government of B.C. chose to close down a childrens' coroner's office, amongst other things, in order to finance the Olympics. Nanci Griffith was good and Ray Davies was amazing; never realized all those songs were Kinks songs.

Camping in the site next to us was a chick named Liz who came up to hang out around our fire one night. She's a former environmental scientist who is now a professional corset maker. First time I've met one of those. I think we feel we made the right choice in camping at the Bird's Hill campground instead of the festival camping, where the party rages nonstop.

Gually's friend Karen took a picture of us in the beer tent, and if I get a copy from her, I'll post it, since we took no pictures ourselves...as usual.

I cordially invite you all up for next year's festival!