Rhubarb and Ginger Lattice Tart

I came across this recipe a long time ago.    The original recipe calls for apples and cloves, but I am using rhubarb and ginger.       Our rhubarb is coming in thick and fast now, and although Max would be delighted if I were to serve rhubarb crumble every day, I like to ring the changes.

It is a delicious mixture of soft and crumbly, slightly gingery, cake base with fairly tart fruit and then topped with crisp ginger lattice-work.     The only trouble is, Max would also be happy to eat this every day, too.     Now I need to find another way to use the rhubarb.

Rhubarb and Ginger Lattice Tart

7oz self raising flour
5oz butter
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
3oz brown sugar
1 egg
12oz rhubarb cut into short lengths
2/3 tablespoons redcurrant jelly
1 tablespoon sugar

I baked mine in an 8 inch square, loose-bottomed tin.  Grease the tin and line the base.  160C


Cream the butter and brown sugar until light  and fluffy, add the beaten egg, a little at a time and then gently mix in the flour and ginger.

Reserve about a quarter of the mixture and spread the rest of it on the base of the tin.

Lay the rhubarb on top of the mixture.    Warm the redcurrant jelly and then brush it over the rhubarb and sprinkle that with the tablespoon of sugar. (more if you like things to be sweet)    It probably won't spread evenly, but it will be fine!

Take the rest of the mixture, and roll it out so that you can cut it into strips for the lattice-work.  Then decorate the top of the rhubarb with strips of the dough.   Tuck in and tidy the edges and then bake it for approx 75 minutes.

Allow it cool in the tin for a while because it will be quite fragile, but it will firm up as it cools.

Dust with icing sugar, or not, according to taste.

Delicious warm, or cold.   You could also add a dollop of your favourite creamy indulgence, or custard.

Pretty to look at, delicious to eat.

The redcurrant jelly and sugar combine and lightly caramelise and yet the slight tartness of the rhubarb cuts through it, the cake is crumbly and slightly gingery, a wonderful combination.

It is a big favourite in our house.

As We Like It - Rhubarb and Custard Cake

My version - much more rhubarb and custard.

We have finally been treated to some warm Spring-like days.  Bliss!

This kind of weather makes me want to clean the house from top to bottom and to trim and tidy the gardens and Owl Wood as my energy levels rise.  So I did, and it was while I was mowing the side lawn that my eye was drawn to ... the rhubarb patch.

I realised that it was badly in need of picking, some stalks were getting alarmingly thick and I didn't want them to become tough and inedible.     Rhubarb crumble was made and put into the freezer but I still had plenty of of rhubarb left and decided to make rhubarb and custard cake again, tweaking the recipe this time, to see if it would work in a way more suited to our taste.


I originally wrote about Rhubarb and Custard Cake here*

The original bake was really nice but I felt it lacked any real rhubarb taste and had too little custard.  Time to experiment.

A tall and still attractive cake/pudding but much more taste and zing.

I increased the amount of custard by half, so I used 3 tablespoons of custard powder, 375 ml milk, etc.  and I also used older rhubarb; the pink and pretty stalks look wonderful, but I wanted that rhubarb acidity and taste to balance the custard.   I piled as many cut and trimmed stalks as I could (in a single layer) on the top of the cake.

The wait for it to cool in the tin was a bit of a test of my patience.   I wanted to know whether it had worked.

Cutting into it and taking out those first few slices was a little scary, I didn't know whether the cake would hold up with all the extra custard in there...it did, and it was just as we had hoped.

This is a cake which improves over a couple of days.   Keep it in the fridge between times and it just gets better and better

or so my cake-eaters tell me.


I suppose it all depends what you want, a pink and pretty cake which has a little flavour or a cake which celebrates rhubarb and custard!  

Message to myself:   Play around with recipes, don't always follow them slavishly.  Make your food something which you really want to eat.

Later in the year I plan to begin working through some of the (very) many recipes there are for gingerbread, in my old Victorian journals.    One of them will really work for our taste buds, others may not.   It will be fun working through them.

Every school-day afternoon Dobson (dog) and I wait at the gate for the school bus.    Hector comes to Gran and Grandpa for a couple of hours and is always hungry.

How could I be so cruel as to have the kitchen smelling so wonderfully of cakes baking, and not have something ready which I knew he would enjoy straight away...I couldn't, so I also made a batch of his favourite chocolate brownies.

He ate his tea, eggy-breads, made with eggs laid by his favourite hen, then managed to eat four brownies.

An afternoon well spent.  It was worth the extra effort of making them to see the boyish delight on his face.  

Rhubarb and Cake

The rhubarb keeps growing and growing.      I'm not complaining, but I do try to find new things to do with it, although Max would quite happily eat rhubarb crumble every day of his life, as long as it came with lashings of custard.

My beautiful old books have plenty of recipes for rhubarb, but I really didn't want to make jam, preserve, or vinegar from it, well not this early in the rhubarb season.  

So I trawled the internet and found a recipe for Rhubarb and Custard Cake which appealed to me and I thought it would suit Max, too.

A cake with a layer of custard and rhubarb held within.   It looked amazing, it spoke to me.

The recipe came from The Australian Women's Weekly, though I found it on Eat Little Bird Blogspot.

Rhubarb and Custard Cake

200 g butter
110 g caster sugar
2 eggs
185  g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
40 g custard powder
rhubarb
20 g butter
4 tsp granulated sugar

(for the custard)
2 tblsp custard powder
55 g caster sugar
250 ml milk
20 g butter
2 tsp vanilla extract


I hold my hand up and admit that eat little bird's cake was much more beautiful than mine has turned out, so it is well worth checking out her blogspot on the link above.

First make the custard, mixing the custard powder, caster sugar and a little milk, into a paste.  Then heat the rest of the milk, mix it into the paste and stir well, returning to the pan until it thickens.   Remove from the heat then stir in the 20 g of butter and the vanilla extract.    Cover with cling film by pressing the cling film onto the surface of the custard, this will prevent a skin forming.

Heat the oven to 180 F,    Grease the sides and base of your 20 cm cake tin, line the base with parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well together.   Sieve the flour, custard powder and baking powder together and stir into the mixture, it will be fairly stiff, but persevere.

Put half the cake mixture into the cake tin, spread it round, then add the custard.   It takes some time to get everything spread around evenly, stick at it!   Then top with another layer of the cake mix.

The rhubarb gets cut into strips and placed on the top in a star shape.

Brush the top of the cake with melted butter and sprinkle generously with the sugar.  Bake it for about one and a quarter hours.   Allow it to cool in the tin.

I was so excited, could hardly wait to sample the cake.

Time passed, the cake cooled.  Time to do the taste test...  I was disappointed, it was nice, but unexciting.   I'll make it again, with more custard and certainly more rhubarb needs to be put in there, somehow.    

I will definitely have to work much harder on the presentation - eat little birds cake looked sublime.

Primrose Vinegar, Cowslip & Rhubarb, too.

My old recipe books continue to delight me, on so many levels.    

When I did my recent spring clean of the pantry I was surprised when I saw just how many varieties of vinegar I had in there...and this isn't the lot, there are three other bottles which I forgot to put out.

They do all get used, some for culinary purposes, others for cleaning.

So I really shouldn't have been surprised to find that there are so many recipes for vinegar in my old books.   I don't just mean for the pretty, or fancy, varieties, either.

Many households used to brew their own vinegar, but I was surprised at how large some of the brews were.  

I found this recipe in the parchment-covered book in the blue slip-cover,  which you can see in about the centre of the header photograph.



To Make Vinegar

To 7 pints of rain water put one pint of pyrolignus ascid (sic) and it is ready for use immediately.


Mmmmn, not sure I fancy that one!   Please don't try it at home.




Sugar Vinegar

To one gallon of water put 1 1/4 lb of the coarsest brown sugar you can get and 1/4 oz of hops.   Boil this 20 minutes, when cold put in a little yeast and work it 3 days.  Then put it in a cask and let it stand till fit for use.   Keep a bit of paper pricked full of holes over the bung hole.

...sounds a bit more wholesome although the instructions are a little vague.



We have been enjoying our home-grown rhubarb for the last few weeks, I'm not sure that I would want to put it to this use while it is so young and tender - but give it a month or two and I probably wouldn't mind.


Rhubarb Vinegar

Get a good bunch of rhubarb to a gallon of water.
2 lbs of brown sugar and 1 lb of treacle.   Let it boil 20 minutes then strain it.   When cold work with a little barm.    Stir it two or three times a day for 3 or 4 days.    Put into a barrel and store in a dark place.



Excellent Vinegar

Boil 6 gallons of water and put in a tub, let it go quite cold.  Get a quantity of rhubarb, peel it and cut in small pieces.   Measure 11 quarts and then bruise well in a mortar.  Put it into the cold water and let it stand 24 hours, stirring occasionally.  Strain it through a sieve into another tub and to 6 gallons of liquor put 8 lbs of moist sugar, stirred in well.

Put all into the barrel and the

 ...looks like Mother? perhaps,  with it.

The barrel must not be quite full and over the bung hole stick with barm or paste a double piece of brown paper full of small holes.

Set in the cellar for 12 months.

It has been a marvellous Spring for primroses, the old railway line has absolutely masses of them growing on the banks this year.

Even so, I think we would struggle to pick enough flowers to make the next recipe.

Primrose Vinegar

Take 6 lbs lump sugar and boil it in 16 quarts of water, take off the scum.   When cold add three tablespoonfuls of yeast and 8 quarts of primrose flowers and stalks.    Let it stand 4 days.  Then put altogether into a cask with a little isinglass.  Keep it in a warm place till sour and then bottle it.



Final recipe for today, Cowslip Vinegar.

Boil 20 quarts of water ( a quart = 2 imperial pints) and 6 1/4lbs of very coarse sugar for 10 minutes and when cool, work it as you work beer (sorry, I don't know what that means!)   Put 5 1/2 quarts of unpicked cowslips and a tea-cupful of yeast.  Let it work three days, then strain it and put it in a cask.   Put a paper over the bung-hole with holes pricked in it, and expose it to the sun and air for three months and then bottle it.  The above makes 5 gallons.


Please note that I have not tried any of these recipes so cannot vouch for them.   



I also have the old recipes for Raspberry Vinegar, Blackberry, Camp, Cucumber, Elderflower, Gooseberry, Mint, Chilli, Tarragon, Celery, Lavender, and Garlic Vinegar - and there could well be more I haven't discovered yet.    I'll post some of them at a later date, but if you want a particular recipe please do let me know.