It's September! Yes. For me that means Autumn is officially on it's way.
Even though we're only into day two there is definitely a cooler wind breezing about in Leeds and I love it.
On Saturday I was lucky enough to be given a veg box from the lovely local Whiteley's Farm in Pudsey. Thank you to Millies in town for providing me with the box and asking me to test out some wonderful local produce to experiment with in the kitchen. Amongst my box of wonders, including smoked garlic, romanesco broccoli, kale and flat-leaf parsley were three magnificent sticks of rhubarb.
I jumped at the chance to try out a crumble cake. A three layer wonder... something I see quite often on blogs and has always caught my eye. It's perfect for this overlap period between the last Summer days and early Autumn. In a month or so it will be proper crumbles all the way but for now in cake form it does the trick!
Rhubarb Crumble Cake
Ingredients:
Sponge:
175g Butter
175g Caster Sugar
3 Eggs
1tsp Vanilla Essence
175g Self-Raising Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1-2tbsps Milk (Only if needed to loosen the batter)
Rhubarb:
2 large sticks of Rhubarb
4tbsp Granulated Sugar
Crumble:
130g Butter
100g Plain Flour
30g Oatbran
3tbsp Demerera Sugar
1tsp Mixed Spice
1tsp Cinnamon
1tsp Baking Powder
Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to 180 and line a 24" loose bottomed cake tin with butter and baking parchment.
2. Chop the rhubarb into inch thick slices and coat in the granulated sugar and leave to one side.
3. Now for the sponge. Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light, fluffy and pale in colour. Add the eggs and vanilla essence and continue to mix together. Fold in the flour and baking powder until all ingredients are combined into a smooth batter. If your batter is too thick then you can add some milk to loosen the mixture.
4. Spoon the cake batter into the cake tin making a nice even layer. Assemble the sugar coated rhubarb in another layer on top.
5. For the crumble topping, place all ingredients in a bowl and rub together the dry ingredients with the butter until you have a mixture that resembles bread crumbs. Place this mixture on top of the cake.
6. Bake in the middle shelf of the oven for 40-50 minutes or until baked (you can test this by inserting a skewer into the cake - if it comes out clean then the cake is baked).
7. Lovely served warm with lashings of custard, or just on it's own cold with a good cup of Yorkshire tea!
