How a fridge spruce led to a squidgy cake of dreams, and a few of my baking secrets revealed...
A recipe for rhubarb and pistachio clotted cream cake that will make your knees weak
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OK, so I realise this is another rhubarb recipe, but forced has turned to field, and hear me out…
Sometimes, the best ideas and creations come by luck, chance or a random collision of unexpected circumstances. This can be the case with my recipe development, which, in a world of endless possibilities, ingredients and inspiration, sometimes needs a tightening of the ‘seasonal, delicious, achievable’ brief that I live by to help things along. When, last week I decided to give my fridge a quick a pre-Easter spruce, I wasn’t expecting one of my finest cakes to date to emerge triumphantly out the other side of that process, but, happily, that’s where we are - and I’m sharing this recipe for a cake that you really need to make, just in time for the weekend. It involves rose water roasted rhubarb (something truly special happens when you combine these guys), and pistachios.
But the not-so-secret ingredient here is the clotted cream in the batter - an out of date (but perfectly serviceable) tub of which I found - shockingly, I mean, who even am I!? - languishing at the back of my fridge, and vowed to use up there and then, along with some handsome stems of Kent field grown rhubarb, which has now taken over from the Yorkshire forced. As Easter weekend was in motion, I decided to combine the two together into a cake to share with friends and family, and the results were next-level: the clotted cream lending a succulence, lightness and magical dampness to the crumb, along with the pistachios.
I only wish I’d had the forethought to shoot this deliciously moist, sharp, elegantly nuanced dessert more beautifully, as perhaps the photos don’t quite do it justice. I feel like it needs some rose petals falling about it, or a couple of batons of squishy rhubarb draped over the top of the cream, but life doesn’t always unfold like a fancy food shoot, guys, and this was a last minute, fridge forage bake, an experiment that I wasn’t expecting it to come so perfectly. I was assuming it would need more tweaking. It doesn’t. And you really shouldn’t just take my word for it…