Rhubarb Cinnamon Loaf Cake @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: We have a couple of plants in our Connecticut garden that really signal spring. Our shad trees blossom briefly—this is supposed to mean the shad (fish) are running in the river. Can’t vouch for that one! The chive plant is gorgeous in its greenery, and the rhubarb plant goes crazy about this time of year. I always feel badly if I don't use it a couple of times, so this is my first foray. I tweaked a recipe for apple cinnamon cake, adding some extra sugar because rhubarb is very, very tart. Next time I'd add even a bit more, plus some butter/sugar crumbles on top...

Ingredients

2/3 cup brown sugar, divided

½ tablespoon cinnamon

1/3 cup white sugar, plus two teaspoons

1/2 cup butter softened

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup milk or buttermilk

2 cups fresh rhubarb, chopped (about 5 short stalks)

1 tbsp melted butter

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or spray an 8x4 loaf pan. Fold a piece of parchment paper so it fits inside the pan, and butter that too.

Combine 1/3 cup of brown sugar with cinnamon in small bowl and set aside.

Cream white sugar, remaining brown sugar, and butter until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla.

Stir together flour and baking powder. Add to egg mixture alternating with milk, starting and ending with flour. Do not over mix. Sprinkle the extra sugar on the cut rhubarb pieces.

Pour half of batter into pan, sprinkle with half the chopped rhubarb and half the remaining cinnamon mixture.

Stir the remaining rhubarb into remaining batter and scrape this into pan. Top with remaining cinnamon mixture.

Bake approx. 5-55 minutes. Check until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool 10 minutes, then use the parchment to lift the cake out and set it on a rack to finish cooling. Serve with ice cream, whipped cream, or exactly as it is!

Don’t forget to pre-order LUCY BURDETTE’S KITCHEN, Recipes and Stories from the Key West Food Critic mystery series...

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including USA Today bestselling and Florida book award winning A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. You can order that wherever books are sold. 

If you’re all caught up, try Lucy’s first women’s fiction title, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS.

Also follow Lucy on Facebook, and sign up for her mailing list right here. 

Ten-minute, one bowl rhubarb cake #rhubarb #cake

From Mary Jane Maffini 

This little cake has been a family and friend fave for years. When I started to make it, we called it Eight Minute Cake, but now that I’ve added a few extra tasty ingredients, it’s Ten Minute – One Bowl Cake.  It’s still a winner in my book.  I usually have one in my freezer in case of cake emergency.

The rhubarb is quite exuberant in the garden this and needed to be harvested (a very easy job). As we have been in extended lockdown with no one allowed to visit even in the back yard, I was understandably thrilled that on our Victoria Day Weekend, we were allowed up to five people outside.  I whipped up three of these little cakes – two for daughters and their hubbies (visiting in shifts) and one for our neighbor who lives alone and has a sweet tooth.

 

In case you want some too, here’s the recipe.

RHUBARB CAKE 

Ingredients

 

2 extra-large eggs, room temperature

½ cup plus one tablespoon sugar

½ cup plus one tablespoon flour

1 – 2 tablespoons chilled butter (forgotten in photo)

1 cup chopped fresh (or frozen rhubarb)

¾ tsp good quality vanilla extract

¼ tsp almond extract

Toasted slivered almonds

1 tsp lemon zest

Icing sugar to dust (optional)

Directions:

Toast the almonds on a cookie sheet while the oven is pre-heating to 400 F. They will toast in about five minutes.

Chop the rhubarb.

Beat eggs until light and fluffy.  Gradually beat in sugar until thick. 

Add vanilla and almond extract and lemon zest.  Beat in flour (don’t overbeat)

 

Pour into greased 8-inch baking pan.   (Or make three and use three pans!)

Arrange a layer of rhubarb on the top.  Sprinkle top with slivered almonds and dot with dabs of butter.  

I like to use these little red pans I got more than twenty years ago in England.  

The cakes do turn out better if you make one at a time, rather than doubling or tripling the recipe. I don’t know why.   Of course they can bake together and they did.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes.   

 

When the cake is cool, dust with icing sugar.  The sweetness counteracts the tartness of the rhubarb.

How about you? Do you have an easy cake or dessert that’s a standby when you want/need something homemade fast?  Let’s hear about it!

 Mary Jane Maffini is the award-winning author of three and a half mystery series: the Camilla Maffini mysteries, the Fiona Silk capers and the Charlotte Adams organizer mysteries – number six coming soon!  The first five Charlotte Adams are being reissued by Beyond the Page Publishing. Recipes have been added and of course, the organizing tips continue! The Charlotte Adams books have recently been optioned for television films.

Organize Your Corpses was be released as an e-book and a trade paper on May 18. There's a great deal for the e-book.   You can order it HERE!

And watch for the reissue of The Cluttered Corpse on June 15th!

With her daughter Victoria Maffini, MJ collaborated on The Book Collector Mysteries as Victoria Abbott. Victoria Abbott spent several happy years on Mystery Lovers Kitchen. MJ  is very glad to be back and Victoria is waving at you all!

Don't forget to check out MJ's Canadian books:  Camilla MacPhee features a fortyish widowed lawyer who runs an advocacy agency for victims of violent crime, in Ottawa, Canada's capital city. Life would be easier if she didn't have the world's worst office assistant, the world's bossiest sisters and, arguably, the world's greatest stubborn streak. If you like your mysteries a bit edgy with a side order of humor, these could be for you.  

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Buttery Rhubarb Cake #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: As a kid I never enjoyed rhubarb. It showed up in our household occasionally in stewed form, slightly tangy and very slimy. But now we have a rhubarb plant flourishing outside our garden. It grows so well and so cheerfully, that it seemed a shame not to try a rhubarb recipe. But I skipped over the rhubarb pies and rhubarb crumbles, and decided to try a cake this time. This recipe is plenty sweet and buttery, with a hint of tart rhubarb for balance. I used a recipe that I found on Misformommy.com, with tweaks of my own, of course.

Ingredients

One and a half cups rhubarb, diced into chunks
3 tablespoons sugar

2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
Two eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
One and a half cups unbleached flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon low sodium baking powder
1/8 teaspoon low-sodium baking soda
1/2 cup whole milk

For the crumb topping
1/3 cup butter
1/4 cup unbleached flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Butter an 8 inch baking pan and set that aside. Combine the rhubarb chunks with the 3 tablespoons sugar and set that aside.

You can make the batter in your food processor, just take care not to over mix. Combine the 2/3 cup butter and 2/3 cup sugar and process until well mixed. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Beat in the vanilla. In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and add this to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk. Mix in the rhubarb, and spread in the prepared pan.

Using either the same processor or pastry cutter, mash the remaining butter with the sugar, flour, and cinnamon until it looks a little chunky. Spread this on top of the batter.

Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Death on the Menu, the 8th Key West food critic mystery, will hit bookstores on August 7 from Crooked Lane Books. 

Here's a pre-order the book link from Amazon--and here's a link to preorder a hard copy from RJ Julia in CT, where you'll be able to get a signed copy. 

Or you can order it from Books and Books in Key West, or call Suzanne Orchard at Key West Island Bookstore ((305) 294-2904)--she'll be delighted to order you a copy! 

Or really, wherever books are sold...

Easiest Rhubarb Cake: a spring favorite #recipe #mystery #giveaway

Thanks to Sheila  Connolly for the reminder earlier this month that the rhubarb in our backyard can turn into something delicious.  We have an exuberant plant!  Have learned a few things about harvesting it:  twist off the stalks, don’t cut.  Harvest before it ‘flowers’ or the rhubarb will be tough.  Discard the leaves: they can be toxic.  And the good news: rhubarb loves the freezer.  

Easiest Rhubarb Cake

INGREDIENTS:

2 extra-large eggs, room temperature

½ cup plus one tablespoon sugar

½ cup plus one tablespoon flour

1 – 2 tablespoons chilled butter

1 cup chopped fresh (or frozen rhubarb)

¾ tsp good quality vanilla extract

¼ tsp almond extract

DIRECTIONS:


Chop the rhubarb.

Beat eggs until light and fluffy. 

Gradually beat in sugar until thick. Add vanilla and almond extract. Beat in flour (don’t overbeat) Ooops! This photo has vanished!

Pour into greased 8 inch baking pan.  

Arrange a layer of rhubarb on the top.  Top with dabs of butter.  I like to use these little red pans I got more than twenty years ago in England.  The cakes do turn out better if you make one at a time, rather than doubling the recipe. I don’t know why.   Of course they can bake together.
 

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes.   

When the cake is cool, dust with icing sugar.  The sweetness counteracts the tartness of the rhubarb.

  
Serve as is or with whipping cream or ice cream.  I think it would be nice with some lemon zest added too.  I'll do that next time and, of course, there is always a next time with this little cake. 

The rhubarb cake freezes beautifully. I usually freeze the second one if I can save it in time. And now on to related topics: tulips. Ottawa,  mysteries and giveaway.

May is our month for rhubarb but it's also our month for tulips and in Ottawa, we have the Tulip Festival which is at the heart of my first published mystery: Speak Ill of the Dead, a Camilla MacPhee book.   

Of course, being a lawyer and victims' advocate, Camilla is a bit grumpy and doesn't care for all those tulips or tourists. Now she's trying to save her friend, Robin, from murder charges.  I still like tulips though and I am still happy with my first book. To honor its May origins I will have a draw from your comments today.  Tell me why YOU would like to read a book about a grumpy lawyer with an interfering family living in Canada's capital or just say something about rhubarb or cake and your name goes in the hat.  I look forward to hearing from you!  If you have already read it, we can make a deal.  DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL!



Mary Jane Maffini is the author of thirteen books in three mystery series and co-author of the book collector mysteries along with her daughter, Victoria, writing as Victoria Abbott.

Here are the Camilla MacPhee books Be careful: may contain humor, difficult relatives and the world's worst office assistant.  Also animals.




Visit MJ at www.maryjanemaffini.com and MJ and Victoria at  Victoria Abbott

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