Celebrate the season and more with rhubarb-pecan tea cake

Brought to you by Victoria Abbott

 aka 

Mary Jane and Victoria Maffini 

Congrats to our lucky winner of  'the pug in the mug' from our last post: Lynda MacDonald, please email us at detect@rogers.com to claim your pugly mug. Yippee!




Speaking of luck: Are you lucky enough to have rhubarb? Whether you pick your own, buy it or use frozen, this tea cake is a delicious treat to celebrate whatever needs celebrating.  We fell totally in love with its rich, tangy taste.  We have a nice patch of it and are reaping the rewards.

Many of you know that we moved into our renovated ranch house two years ago.  The house suited us perfectly but the garden lay in ruins. All that survived years of abuse was a lone peony, some wandering hostas and a vigorous rhubarb plant.  We have been very happy with that rhubarb plant and have tried a number of recipes with our harvest. Yes, we know that rhubarb is really a vegetable, but we’ll pretend it’s a fruit and put it in this yummy cake. We understand the cake freezes well, but haven’t had any left over to test that. Oh well.  The tea cake is an adaptation of a recipe from Chatelaine, a Canadian magazine with super recipes and more. Chatelaine has been the source of many a great meal here. 

Rhubarb tea-cake

Assemble your ingredients!

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1  egg

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

zest of one lemon



1/2 cup chopped pecans

2 cups chopped rhubarb

FOR GLAZE:

1 cup sifted icing sugar

4 to 5 tsp lemon juice

Then all you have to do is:

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease the bottom of an 8 × 4-in. loaf pan.  Cut a rectangle of parchment paper the width of the loaf pan and about six inches longer. Place the paper in the pan with the extra paper hanging over.  This makes it very easy to remove the tea loaf after it cools. 

Stir flour with baking soda and salt in medium bowl.  Add the lemon zest.  We found the zest gave the cake real zing, but you can dial it back if you prefer.


Whisk egg with brown sugar, buttermilk, oil and vanilla in large bowl, then stir in flour mixture. Add rhubarb and pecans and stir just until combined. Scrape batter into prepared pan.


 
Bake in centre of oven until a cake tester inserted in centre of loaf comes out clean, 70 to 75 min. Transfer to a rack to cool in pan for 10 min.

Stir icing sugar with lemon juice in a small bowl, adding juice 1 tsp at a time until smooth. We like ours slightly runny.  You must suit yourself with icing consistency.

Drizzle glaze over warm loaf, letting it run down the sides.

Enjoy with or without ice cream.  Yum.



Here’s a dandy tip: Are you tired of wasting buttermilk or passing up recipes with buttermilk?
We know that there are many substitutes for buttermilk, but we love the real thing and now we'll always have it at our fingertips, because we've learned you can freeze buttermilk in half-cup measures by filling a muffin tin and freezing it. Repackage into freezer bag after 24 hours.   It even looks cute!

 

But wait! What else is new? Is there something else we should be celebrating?




Of course! We want to celebrate that The Wolfe Widow, third in our book collector series, will be out in less than three months, Less than 90 sleeps!  It will hit the shelves and e-readers on September 2,  2014.  

But you can  Pre-order it here!

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter for contests, news and fun. 

Just click here!