Quick and easy one bowl rhubarb pie

Wow it has been a hot day today. Just sitting still in the office made me sweat. So you can only imagine the puddle of sweat I left behind when biking home from work in this very nontraditional tropical climate we are experiencing. By the time I had dried myself off after the shower I was sweaty again. Isn't this a lovely and appetising start for a food blog! Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, it's finally summer! I hope this weather is here to stay to make up for the lousy start of the summer. Luckily the bachelor pad is actually not too bad, and it hasn't been nearly as hot as my little shoebox of an apartment used to be during hot days. I can remember the few hot days we had last summer, I was actually sleeping under a wet towel, it was the only way to cool off enough to be able to go to sleep.

Today I had dinner at a colleagues house. I wanted to make something for dessert, but with this heatwave going on, I couldn't imagine doing anything too complicated. Then I remembered this recipe from many years ago. I used to have a Winnie the Pooh folder with my favourite recipes before I moved abroad. That folder was stored at my Mum's house for years, until last Christmas I got rid of almost all of my possessions, with the rationale that if I haven't missed them during the three years I have been away, I won't need them anymore. This folder was among the things to go. But not before I had typed down some of my favourite recipes, and this definitely is one of my most used recipes, although I haven't made it in years. First of all, it's really delicious. And second of all, it's so easy to make, you only need one bowl and something to mix with. It's super quick, you will only need a few minutes to get it in the oven. Chopping the rhubarb is the most time consuming part of the entire process. 

I guess re-discovering this recipe is a good reminder that going after that next new thing isn't always the best solution, sometimes there are valuable things to hold on to in our past. Everyday things which seem so ordinary you don't alway pay attention to them. Now that this recipe is back in my mind, I will certainly use it more often. 

I'm sorry that the quantities are in volume and not in weight. I have added weights using approximate conversions, but I have always used the volumetric measures when preparing this recipe. And I am probably getting so much stick for what I'm about to say, but I don't think it's really that strict, I have made this many times without measuring, just tossing in the ingredients, and it turns out good every time.

One bowl rhubarb pie:

200 ml sugar (170 g, approx 3/4 cups plus two tablespoons)

400 ml flour (260 g, approx 1 3/4 cups)

150 g butter

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla sugar

2 tsp baking powder

250 ml (1 cup) milk

3 stems of rhubarb

The howto:

Preheat oven to 225 degrees C (425 degrees F, gas mark 7). Chop the rhubarb. Using your fingers, mix butter, flour and sugar until resembling the consistency of coarse sand. Remove about 100 ml (a heaped 1/3 cup) of the mixture to another bowl (this will be the crumble on top). Add the rest of the ingredients to the remaining butter-sugar-flour mixture and mix quickly. The batter will be very runny and doesn't have to be completely smooth. Pour into a pie tin (not one with a loose bottom though, as the batter is runny. No, don't look at me like that, of course I don't know this from experience...), add the rhubarb on top and sprinkle with the crumble. Bake for about 25 minutes.

The verdict:

Quick, easy, almost no washing up, and utterly delicious. Eat as is, or add custard, whipped cream or ice cream. Mix it up and replace rhubarb with pretty much anything, such as blueberries, strawberries or fruit. What more is there to say.

Card of the day:

I had such a blast making these cards!  I love bags and I love shoes. And obviously crafting. So it was great to be able to combine all three. Also,  I got to use my Tim Holtz distress markers for colouring. I like to stamp and then heat emboss with clear ultra fine embossing powder before colouring. The background stamp is Hero Arts and the shoes, bags and sentiments are from a set I bought off ebay and doesn't have any indication of what make it is. The papers are all from Dovecraft Back to Basics III set, and the cards are Kraft cardstock.