Magic custard cake with summer fruit

 

I'm not sure I completely get the thing with custard. I mean, it's not bad, I wouldn't spit in a bowl of custard, but at the same time it's everywhere. The Culinary Consultant loves his custard, I'm sure he would be happy just eating it out of the tub with a spoon. If we have pudding with custard I know the pudding is there just for show, and the correct custard to pudding ratio is at least 3:1. And it seems like my Culinary Consultant is not the only British male who likes his custard. The Toddster, who is the Culinary Consultant equivalent on the lovely blog The English Kitchen, also seems to love his custard. So when I saw the recipe for this Custard Cake on the blog and read about how the Toddster loves his custard, I had to laugh out loud and obviously also decided I need to bake this cake for the Culinary Consultant. 

It's a very simple cake to put together, but you don't quite get away with doing it in one bowl as you need another bowl for whipping the egg whites. And it uses only basic ingredients you should have at hand at any time. It doesn't take many minutes to prepare. The hard thing is to wait for the necessary three hours while the cake cools. And as the original recipe says, please be aware that the batter is very runny and you will think this won't work at all and that you have done something wrong. You haven't. It will work. But don't use a springform pan!

Magic custard cake (serves 8):
4 eggs at room temperature
2 tbsp water
150 g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract (I used the equivalent amount of vanilla paste)
125 g butter, melted
115 g all purpose flour
500 ml milk
To serve:
icing sugar
berries or fruit (I used strawberries and rhubarb compote)

The howto:
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. Carefully butter a cake tin (8 inches in diameter). I used a silicone cake tin and didn't prepare it in any way, and had no problems with sticking. 

Separate eggs into two bowls. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add water, sugar and vanilla to the egg yolks and beat until light and fluffy. Add the melted butter and keep whisking. Add the flour and milk, and whisk until a smooth batter forms. Gently fold in the egg whites. Bake for 1 hour, or until golden brown. Let cool for at least 3 hours before dusting with icing sugar and serving with fruit or berries.

The verdict:
This is what it says on the tin, custard cake. It tastes like custard, but it's a cake. You won't believe it will ever become an actual cake when you pour the runny batter into the cake tin, but somehow magically it will turn into a cake after all. I think mine could have done with just a few minutes less in the oven, as the middle of the cake turned quite solid whereas the pictures on the blog with the original recipe it looked like the middle stays just a little bit gooey. But it was really yummy especially with rhubarb and strawberries on top. Definitely a summer dessert I will try again, I think this would be a great alternative for a cheesecake for a BBQ or other summer get-together.

Rhubarb, ginger and white chocolate muffins

I started my blogging career with a trio of muffin recipes. Lemon and white chocolate, rhubarb muffins and Quality Street muffins. For a while it looked like I should have called the blog InvisiblePinkMuffins. Since then the muffin recipe frequency on the blog has taken a nosedive. Time to do something about that! I wanted to make an extra special muffin to take with me to work to celebrate my birthday last week. And everyone knows the way to pimp up a muffin is to add more goodies into them. Fresh rhubarb form the garden was a must, it's only rhubarb season once a year. Some white chocolate and candied ginger for a bit of sweet and spice. And maybe throw in a zesty icing, just to make sure there's enough things going on.

For the recipe, I went back to my trusty basic muffin recipe from Kinuskikissa (the Finnish baking blog I've mentioned a time or two or seventeen...). What can I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, it's such a quick and easy one bowl recipe. Muffins are also perfect to take along somewhere. You can leave some of them with your friendly ladies at reception, and take the rest along to your office. You can't do that with a cake. You can also try out a few in advance at home just to make sure they turned out good enough to take to work. With a cake all you can do is hope for the best. And if you really plan it right, you actually make one and a half times the recipe which means you have plenty of muffins to take to work *and* to have several left to snack on at home as well. Sneaky!

Just a note, the original recipe gives volume measurements in deciliters (100 milliliters) which is the normal volumetric unit of measurement for recipes back home. I have converted to approximate cups and weights using online calculators and I believe they should be close enough to work but have not tested so use at your own risk. Don't blame me that the cup measurements are quite whacky!

Rhubarb, ginger and white chocolate muffins (makes 12):
150 g butter
150 ml or 2/3 cups minus one tbsp or 128g sugar
2 eggs
400 ml or 1 2/3 cups minus one tbsp or 260 g all purpose flour 
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
150 ml or 2/3 cups minus one tbsp  milk
3-4 tender spring stems of rhubarb
50 g white chocolate chips
3-4 pieces of candied ginger

about 250 ml or 1 cup icing sugar
zest and juice from 1 lemon

The howto:
Bring the butter, eggs and milk to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (392 F or gas mark 6). Using a handheld electric mixer, whisk together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Keep whisking and add eggs one at a time. Add the flour, baking powder, vanilla paste and vanilla paste and mix once or twice. Add the milk and only mix enough to bring the batter together, careful not to over mix. Finely chop the rhubarb and ginger, and fold it into the batter. Divide into 12 muffin cases. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

After removing the muffins from the oven, let them cool for a few minutes while making the icing. Put the icing sugar in a small bowl, and add lemon zest to taste (a whole lemon will give a very mouth puckering zingy icing, use less if you prefer a more subtle flavour). Add lemon juice until desired consistency, you can add a bit of water if needed. Put into a piping bag and pipe a zigzag pattern on the muffins. If you don't have a piping bag, just make your icing a bit more runny and use a spoon to drizzle over the muffins. The muffins keep quite well for a few days in an airtight container if needed, but are best on the day of baking.

The verdict:
I think the combo of rhubarb, ginger, white chocolate and lemon worked very well. Although the muffins are quite sweet, the zestiness of the rhubarb and lemon counter the sweetness very well, and the ginger brings in some nice, spicy flavours. They seemed to go down a treat with the colleagues and I really enjoyed them. This is such a perfect easy and quick recipe that gives perfect muffins every time. 

Rhubarb kissel and semolina pudding

This is another post where I have learned something new about some of my childhood foods. When we were children, we would often have oatmeal for breakfast. Every now and then we would have porridge deluxe, i.e. semolina porridge. It was such a treat. In Finnish semolina is called "manna", and I had no idea what it was called in English, so I just assumed you couldn't get it over here. However through some coincidence or other I learned that it was called semolina and that you could get in pretty much any supermarket. So I got myself a large bag of coarse semolina (it's still not quite the same as the Finnish "manna" but works well enough) and have enjoyed the occasional treat of semolina porridge (or pudding, as I think it's called over here. But basically it's just a porridge!)

Another food I had always assumed was pretty much Finnish was the "kiisseli". I haven't found anything resembling it in the UK. However, for this post, I decided to do some research, and lo and behold, I have learned that "kiisseli", called kissel in English (thank you Wikipedia) is a Slavic dish, and the name (which I always thought was a "real" Finnish word) comes from the Slavic word for sour. I have also learned that according to Wikipedia kissel is a "viscous fruit dish". Basically, it's fruit or berries cooked in a bit of water (with sugar) and then thickened with cornstarch, potato starch or arrowroot. As a child, I remember when I was in daycare, we used to have it a lot as a dessert. Strawberry kissel, rhubarb kissel, blueberry kissel. It's a nice dessert or breakfast, it can be enjoyed with porridge, ice cream, custard or just as is. I really love rhubarb kissel, it's not too sweet (and you can adjust the amount of sugar to make it exactly how you like it) and  it just tastes of summer. It's also ridiculously easy and quick to make.

Semolina pudding (serves 4-6):
1l milk
1 1/4 dl (1/2 cup) semolina
pinch of salt

Rhubarb kissel (serves 6-8):
500 g rhubarb
400 ml water
100 ml sugar
2 tbsp corn- or potato starch
1/2 tsp vanilla syrup

The HowTo:
For the semolina pudding, bring the milk to a boil in a large saucepan (preferably non-stick if you have one, but any saucepan will work). Add the semolina and salt, cook until the pudding thickens, about 15-20 minutes.

For the rhubarb kissel, chop the rhubarb into about 1/2 inch thick pieces. Put the rhubarb, water and sugar in a saucepan, bring to a boil and let cook for a few minutes until the rhubarb has softened. Mix the starch with a tablespoon or two of water. Take the rhubarb mixture off the hob, very slowly pour in the starch and water mixture, while stirring. Put the mixture back onto the hob, and bring to a gentle boil for another minute or so to thicken the kissel. You can serve the kissel and pudding warm (not hot) or cold.

The verdict:
I'm  sorry for choosing another one of those foods that just isn't photogenic at all. And I need to get some glass bowls for photography... But as usual, it's not the looks that counts, and I wouldn't blog about it unless I loved it. This is comfort food at it's best. It's perfect for breakfast or pudding. Or why not a light lunch. You can have the semolina pudding on it's own or with jam or fresh fruit. You can have the kissel on it's own, or with ice cream or custard. And with rhubarb season in full swing, this is definitely worth a try! 

Vanilla glazed rhubarb oatmeal scones

I usually begin my weekend morning by browsing all the blogs I follow. The other week, I stumbled upon a yummy looking Rhubarb Roly Poly recipe from The English Kitchen. Although I had promised myself I wouldn't bake anything that weekend, the recipe got me thinking of the first stalks of rhubarb out there in the garden. However, I felt I didn't want to wait for dessert but wanted something immediately, so I googled rhubarb scones and came across this delicious sounding recipe for Vanilla glazed rhubarb oatmeal scones on the Kitchen Daily blog. I took a liking to the recipe as you can almost convince yourself they are a healthy sort of treat with the oatmeal and whole wheat flour. Well, at least I can, as I'm very good at self deception. So there I was, on a Sunday morning with fresh warm scones by 8.30 in the morning. Good thing our garden faces out to fields. Our neighbours would have thought I was stark raving mad if they had seen me out there in the garden in my pink monkey robe and knife in hand, bending down over the rhubarb plant at 7.30 in the morning. But when a craving hits, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. 

I have used the recipe almost unaltered, although I did halve it as 16 fresh scones in my kitchen on a Sunday morning didn't seem like the safest of prospects.

Vanilla glazed rhubarb oatmeal scones (makes 8, recipe from the Kitchen Daily blog):
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup oats (not the quick cooking type)
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
170 g butter, cubed
1/4 cup buttermilk (I made my own by adding a splash of vinegar into regular milk)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup chopped rhubarb
1 egg for egg wash and caster sugar for sprinkling on top

Glaze:
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 1/2 tbsp milk
1/4 tsp vanilla paste

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F). Mix the flour, oats, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bow. Add the cubed cold butter and using your fingers, crumble everything together until the texture of coarse sand. In another bowl, mix the buttermilk, vanilla and egg, and add to the flour and butter mixture. Mix just enough to bring the dough together. Add the rhubarb. Pat the dough to form a rectangle about 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick. Cut into eight pieces (first into four pieces once length- and once widthwise and then across the diagonals so you get eight triangles). Place triangles on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, and brush with egg. Sprinkle caster sugar on top. Bake for 20-22 minutes until baked and golden brown. Let cool for a few minutes on a wire rack.

While the scones are cooling, mix together the ingredients for the glaze and drizzle onto the scones. You can adjust the proportion of icing sugar to milk depending on how thick you like your glaze. Serve while still warm with a cup of tea or coffee. 

The verdict:
These scones were a perfect treat for a Sunday morning as well as a perfect way to enjoy the first crop of rhubarb this spring. The rhubarb stalks were still thin and tender and really tangy. The scones were wonderfully crumbly inside with a crisp crust formed by the sugar and egg wash. The combination of the sweet vanilla glaze and sour rhubarb was perfect. Also, the oats and whole wheat flour give them a rougher texture than regular scones, along with loads more flavour. Not a completely innocent treat with all that butter, but a great way to treat yourself on a lazy weekend morning.

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.

Rhubarb buttermilk pound cake

Back home people are off to celebrate Vappu (Walpurgis Night). In Finland Vappu is one of the major holidays. People gather on the 30th of April and first of May for picnics in the parks and drink oodles of champagne (or any other alcoholic beverage, at least later in the evening). Particularly students tend to party hardy on Vappu. It's also pretty much tradition that the weather is very unpredictable during this outdoor event. I have distinct memories of icy wind and sleet and of trying to grab a bottle with fingers numb from the pain. When I was a child the family Vappu tradition was to go and see the huge bonfire in one of the villages close to where I lived. We would get balloons (you know those nice foil balloons, not the boring regular ones) and we would eat sausages and potato salad and a special donut type Vappu pastry called Tippaleipä (funnel cake). Which I will make some day. But not today. Today I will settle for a nice rhubarb bundt cake and think of all my friends who are partying and enjoying the day off tomorrow. I will, however, be enjoying a morning without a hangover, which might be the envy of some. But unfortunately I will still have to go to work.

This cake is not my fault. This cake is what happens when your best friend moves to another country, and donates the contents of her fridge and freezer to you. And I have a very small freezer, so I had to use up most of the things she gave me. I threw a mixed lot of pork, tomato passata, beans, sugarsnaps, dried mushrooms, barley and chickpeas in a slow cooker. I love my slow cooker, you can throw anything in there, and it comes out an undefined mushy consistency and you just eat it without asking too many questions. All sorts of sins have been hidden in a slow cooked tomato passata based stew. As I will also be moving in exactly one month, I really have to work hard to empty out my kitchen. Especially as I'm moving into a house with a kitchen even more stocked to the brim than mine. And that kitchen also needs to be emptied before the upcoming Big Move. But more about that later.

What this rant is really about is a bag of frozen rhubarb. When I was growing up, we had a rhubarb plant growing in our garden. And I wasn't too appreciative of rhubarb in those days. It was quite a substantial plant, and produced more rhubarb than we consumed, so my mum was happy to give some away to anybody who asked. These days, I would be so happy to have that rhubarb plant at hand. But for now I have to stick to store bought rhubarb, and it tends to be quite expensive except in high season, so any rhubarb outside of that short timespan is precious. So of course I had to use it right up. The other day I picked up a jar of buttermilk from the grocery store with no specific plan in mind. Seems like there was a bigger plan in action that day, as that buttermilk turned out to be a perfect companion with my gift of rhubarb. And the spoils from my friend's freezer also contained lemons (who knew you could freeze lemons, but apparently you can!) So I threw rhubarb and buttermilk into google, and out came this. I didn't make any big alterations to the recipe, except I only made 2/3 of the original recipe, hence the somewhat whacky measures for some things and I didn't change the amounts of some ingredients like the lemon zest, baking powder or lemon oil (yes, I'm inconsistent and you should not do what I did but use the original recipe instead unless you are a crazy kitchen rebel). The amount of ingredients listed below are what I used, for the full sized cake, see the original recipe.

Rhubarb buttermilk bundt cake:
150 g butter at room temperature
1 cup plus 2 1/2 tbsp caster sugar
zest of one lemon (somewhat increased from the original recipe, but hey, I like lemon)
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour (I used 1 cup all purpose and 3/4 cups brown because that's what I had on hand)
1 tsp baking powder
2/3 tsp salt
1/2 tsp lemon oil (like the original recipe, I didn't have any so I used lemon extract)
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 cups rhubarb cut into small pieces

Glaze
juice from 1 lemon
1 tbsp very soft butter
1.5-2 cups icing sugar

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (original recipe says 175 degrees C/350 degrees F) and butter a bundt cake tin. Using an electric whisk, cream the butter, caster sugar and lemon zest until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time and keep whisking. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Add the lemon oil to the butter and sugar cream, and then the buttermilk and flour in small, alternating, batches. Don't over mix. Finally, gently fold in the rhubarb (which according to the original recipe should first be tossed with a few tbsp flour). Transfer batter into the bundt pan and bake for about 30 minutes, then rotate your tin in the oven and bake for another approximately 20-25 minutes. Let cool for about 30 minutes. While the cake is cooling, mix the ingredients for the glaze. After cooling the cake, remove from tin and drizzle the glaze on top.

The verdict:
I'm not traditionally a big fan of bundt cakes. But this one has both rhubarb and buttermilk, so I thought there is probably not too much risk that it would turn out dry. And I was indeed right! This is the most decadently moist bundt cake I have ever had. It was absolute perfection. I hate recipes that say the cake was even better the next day, because who has time to wait. But I have to be blunt, this cake really was even better the next day when the moisture had seeped all through the cake and it had cooled completely. Not saying it was bad right after baking either, but it was just somehow more balanced the next day. So this is definitely something you can make ahead of time. 

I had one little technical difficulty with this cake. I had a really hard time removing the cake from the pan, as you can see from the pictures. But this was completely my own fault as I couldn't be bothered to butter the cake tin. I thought the non-stick coating would be enough to prevent it from sticking. Well, it wasn't. But that just gave me an excuse to drizzle the glaze on extra thickly. And everyone knows the glaze is always the best part anyways. I was actually going to add white chocolate drops into the cake as well, and I think they would have complemented the rhubarb really nicely, but at the same time, I like it that the cake wasn't too sweet and the rhubarb flavour came through really strongly. But I might try it some other time with the chocolate added in. And this cake batter would probably work really well for any sort of berry or fruit cake. I can imagine strawberries would be great, or maybe peaches or even pineapple. 

Card of the day:
As Vappu is the start of spring, I thought today's card should be something spring-y. Flowers, butterflies and pretty colours. I used Tim Holtz Distess inks Spun Sugar, Broken China and Bundled sage to stamp flowers and swirly patterns onto cream cardstock. I then embossed with a swirly embossing folder (using the rolling pin method, as I don't think I can buy my much awaited Big Shot until I have a craft room where I can actually put said thing). I cut out the scalloped ovals using scissors (I have this smart system where I have printed different shapes onto paper, and then using a permanent marker, traced the shapes onto a transparent sheet, cut that out and then used a pencil to trace the outline onto cardstock and then cut that out. Easy and convenient, right?). I stamped parts of the swirly stamp onto my scalloped ovals, embossed using clear embossing powder and then used ink blending foam to ink the edges of the scalloped ovals. I used Antique Linen distress ink to stamp the Hero Arts Flourish Background onto an oval of cream cardstock, and then Vintage Photo or Chipped Sapphire distress ink to stamp the butterfly. I used the foam to blend some distress inks around the edges of the butterfly ovals as well as the background. Finished with ribbons and bows, and matted with coloured cardstock before attaching to white cardstock. If these cards don't epitomise spring, I don't know what will.

Rhubarb ice

Today's entry will not be so much about the recipe (as it's not really a recipe, and I'm basically re-using something I already blogged about, and some aspects of it weren't very successful), but I'm using it as an excuse to write about something I think is quite awe inspiring. That something is my Mum's garden. Well, actually it's my Mum's partner Veikko's garden, as it is primarily Veikko who takes care of it. My Mum and Veikko live in a house in the countryside in South Finland, and they have a huge garden with plum trees, several types of berry bushes and a huge vegetable garden. 

The vegetable garden. In the front rows there are several
types of lettuce, parsley and dill. Next beans and beet root,
and in the back plenty of potatoes. To the left Jerusalem
artichoke and plum trees in the back.

Red gooseberries

Beetroot

I'm always in awe walking in the garden. And my Mum and Veikko get a huge amount of produce from the garden which they freeze and use through the winter. Veikko makes his own compost for the vegetable garden, which is probably one of the secrets why it keeps producing so much vegetables and herbs every year. And I was lucky to be in Finland  around the time when things start to get ripe, so I got some wonderful pictures. 

Courgette. I wish I could have cooked the
courgette flowers... always wanted to do that.

Black currants

Oregano. Delicious and pretty.

The vegetable garden is huge and the main vegetable is potato. In addition there are beets, Jerusalem artichokes, several kinds of lettuce, several types of beans, herbs, tomatoes, courgette, spinach, raspberries, gooseberries, black currants and rhubarb. And probably a few other things I'm forgetting about. I definitely want a garden like that when I grow up. Although then I would need a gardener as well, as I certainly don't have the patience to plant, weed, compost, harvest and all the other things you need to do to keep your garden flowering and produce harvested and stored. Well, since I want a house keeper, a driver and a maid in my home when I am a proper grown up, I guess throwing in a gardener in the mix wouldn't be impossible. I will of course be living in a ten bedroom mansion which is complete with stables, paddocks and huge grounds to ride around on. I will be wearing a huge flowing dress and someone has invented a time machine to go back in time a hundred years or so. Ok, I need to stop watching costume dramas and get back to reality to my tinier than a shoebox studio, which has been hotter than hell the last few days.

Plums were nowhere near ripe yet.

Tomatoes need a bit more time as well.

Beans just waiting to be picked and frozen.

I haven't had potatoes in a long time, as they aren't a part of my nutrition plan. However, after all the chocolate, cookies, bread and other horrible unhealthy foods I had already ingested, I thought I might as well get my potato fix as well. So me and Mum has a feast of new potatoes straight from the earth, boiled with a lot of dill and eaten with pickled herring and smoked salmon. True fast food, and what a wonderful taste of summer. If you have never had pickled herring, pick up some on your next trip to Finland, Sweden (or Ikea). I know it doesn't sound too appetising, but it's brilliant. Especially on a hot summer's day after sweating too much, to replenish some of that lost sodium. It's also a brilliant hangover food. Traditionally served in the morning after parties which have run all the way through to the next morning, such as First of May brunch. 

Potatoes and garlic pickled herring.
Summery fast food.

Ok, so like I said before, this isn't really a recipe, it's an extension of the three ingredient ice cream I blogged about earlier. However, the rhubarb custard is nice as a pudding on it's own as well, you don't need to make it into ice cream. In that case, you probably want to add some sugar. 

Someone else was interested in the rhubarb too.

Rhubarb ice cream (serves 6):
For the rhubarb custard
4-5 big stalks of rhubarb
1 cup (ish) of water
1-2 tbsp sugar (I used caster sugar but would have used brown sugar if I would have had some available)
2 tsp ground cardamom
2 tsp potato starch (I guess corn starch would do as well)

For the ice cream
1 can (395g) condensed milk
250 ml (1 cup) strawberry flavoured heavy cream (or regular cream if you live in a country which hasn't discovered the joys of flavoured creams, add strawberry extract if you happen to have some)
2 tbsp vanilla sugar or vanilla extract

The howto: Chop the rhubarb into a cooking pot, add water sugar and cardamom. Bring to a boil and let cook for about 5 minutes or until the rhubarb is soft. Mix the potato starch with a tablespoon or two of water, take the pot off the heat, pour in the potato starch in a thin stream while stirring so that no lumps form. Put back onto the stove, and bring to a boil (only until you see the first bubble forming). Let cool. If you feel like the custard isn't thickening at all when you add the potato starch, you can add some more, but beware that the custard will get a bit thicker when you bring it to a boil the second time.

Rhubarb custard.

For the ice cream, mix all ingredients and use a hand held whisk to whip until fluffy and forming stiff peaks. 

Mix rhubarb custard and ice cream mix, freeze over night. I had a strange problem where about a quarter of the ice cream mix just disappeared while waiting for it to freeze. I'm sure there is something wrong with my Mum's freezer...

The verdict:
Let's start with the good news. The ice cream was delicious. The combination of strawberry and rhubarb is a classic, and I love the simple ice cream recipe which doesn't require an ice cream maker. Then the bad news... *Someone* was being quite a blonde, thinking it would be a good idea to combine a water based custard (which obviously freezes to hard ice) with ice cream (which is soft and fluffy and stays soft even when frozen). I didn't even mix the custard and ice cream properly, but just dotted the rhubarb cream into the ice cream thinking I would get nice swirls of rhubarb in the ice cream. Well in theory yes, there were swirls of rhubarb, but it was impossible to scoop the ice cream out as the rhubarb swirls were hard as rock. So to be able to scoop out the ice cream, you had to let it soften for quite a while in room temperature. At which point the actual "ice cream" was quite soggy and the rhubarb still ice cold. I think the solution to this would be to thoroughly mix the ice cream with the rhubarb custard so that the entire mixture would be rather homogeneous. I think I have to try that out at some point. Although after my ten day binge eating holiday, I'm not quite sure when I will be allowed to eat ice cream again. I have probably shifted the excess weight by Christmas... Which is not the greatest of ice cream seasons. I guess the other alternative would be to freeze the ice cream mixture and refrigerate the rhubarb custard, and serve scoops of the ice cream with rhubarb custard poured on top. 

As I said earlier, you can also serve the rhubarb custard on it's own after completely cooled. It's a nice, refreshing summer pudding. Nice with a bit of whipped cream. Or fresh raspberries or strawberries, if you want to be healthy. You can also serve the rhubarb custard with your main course, it goes very well with barbecued salmon. However, you might want to reduce the sugar a bit, and add a teaspoon of salt. 

Rhubarb muffins

In my earlier post I think I happened to mention something of a muffin madness going on. Well, it wouldn't be muffin madness with just one muffin recipe. So here is muffin madness 2.0. Expect another instalment from the twisted workings of InvisiblePinkUni's mind shortly. 


You might also see a sub-theme to the muffin madness as this recipe contains another flavour of Whittard's white hot chocolate. According to their website, they have 18 flavours of hot chocolate and I will make it one of my targets of 2012 to try to apply each and every one of them in a baking recipe. With 8 more months to go this year, and 2 flavours already done, I'm left with only 2 flavours a month. Should be doable without a problem. If anyone want's to pop over to the InvisiblePinkLair for a cuppa, feel free, as I will soon be stocking an impressive selection of hot chocs.


The rhubarb preserve I'm using here is something I bought on my recent trip to Geneva. It's really good as it's not too sweet. And it's organic, and I do try to keep it organic as much as possible. And yes, I know fully well there is no scientific evidence for organic being better than "regular", but sometimes you just have to (gasp and horror) go with your gut feeling. The place I bought it from was called Le Pain Quotidien, and I just realised as I googled it, that they actually have cafes in London as well. This is bad bad news, as they had the most amazing pastries and cakes, including a macaroon the size of your palm. Yes it's true, I'm not making this up. And incidentally, I think I can see a trip to London coming up very soon.


And now that I have inflicted horrible psychological pain to everyone by making you read my ramblings, I'll move on to the main subject. Again, the muffin recipe is stolen from Kinuskikissa, the greatest baking blog out there.



Makes 6 big muffins, and leaves a bit so you can scrape the bowl and enjoy...

75 g butter
65 g caster sugar
1 egg
25 g Whittard's rhubarb white hot chocolate
115 g white flour
1 tsp baking powder
75 ml milk
rhubarb preserve

150 ml double cream
40 g Whittard's rhubarb white hot chocolate

The howto:
1. Preheat oven to 225 C.
2. Beat together butter and caster sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg.
3. Mix dry ingredients, and sift into the butter/sugar/egg mix. This is where you should, in theory, carefully fold the mixture using a spatula. I just mix for a few seconds with the electric mixer... 
4. Add milk and mix.
5. Spoon some batter into muffin moulds or a tin (I prefer silicon moulds), add about half a teaspoon of rhubarb preserve and then top with more batter. Leave room in the moulds, as the mixture will rise quite a lot in the oven.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until they look done. 
7. Mix the hot chocolate powder into the double cream and whip. Pipe onto the muffins when they have cooled.


Each muffin (if you make 6 from the recipe above) is approximately 380 kcal (22g fat, 42.5g total carbs, 3.8g protein). Please note that the calorie contents are estimates only, and will vary depending on the ingredients you use. If you are as obsessed with calories as I am, I suggest you do your own calculations based on your specific ingredients. 

Verdict:
Could a muffin be anything but delicious? I think this would work perfectly well if you made the rhubarb preserve yourself by just cooking the fresh rhubarb in a small amount of water (with sugar added if you prefer). Although you would probably have to add some gelatin to keep it from being too runny. Maybe even just add raw rhubarb pieces, they might cook in the muffin? The whipped cream is a bit extravagant, and the muffins are divine without it, so for a healthier option, just leave it out. Or replace with some other topping if whipped cream is not your thing. I had to pop some of these in the freezer immediately after baking to keep me from ingesting all of them at once. I still have some rhubarb preserve left, so I might just have to make another batch some day soon.