USING YOUR RHUBARB
This cake recipe is an essential
If you’ve got rhubarb and don’t already have this recipe, you need it.
It’s quick and easy to make, feeds a crowd, transports well (but is irresistible warm from the oven with ice cream on top), and — with its lunar-crater-like surface of melted brown sugar, butter and cinnamon — kind of fun.
Even more fun is trying to trace its provenance. Person after person has told me it’s their mother’s or their aunt’s or their neighbour’s recipe. I got my copy so long ago (from a friend, who got it from a friend), it appears to be typewritten.
Now, it crops up on multiple websites from allrecipes.com and foodess.com to epicurious, where it scores a glowing four out of four forks. Someone identified as “foodfairy” from Ottawa even weighs in on its name (“the melted butter creates lots of craters”).
It is almost certainly Canadian, it turns out. In 2009, Elizabeth Baird, former food editor of Canadian Living, revealed that when she was still a freelancer, she and home economist Sandy Hall adapted and tweaked the recipe to its present form in 1981 for a summer cookbook special published by Canadian Living. But she says the original recipe was one that Hall got from her mother-in-law, who made it every spring.
I don’t know where Hall’s mother-in-law got her recipe, or if she invented it, but we do know that it went viral, long before that was even a thing. Within weeks of it being published, Baird said, “Lunar Rhubarb Cake recipes popped up in publications from weekly local newspapers to big city dailies and, in the following rhubarb season, national magazines.”
LUNAR RHUBARB CAKE
Makes: About 16 servings Preparation time: About an hour (but 45 minutes baking)
“As for all cakes, let the butter, egg and buttermilk come to room temperature before making the batter,” advised Elizabeth Baird. “Set the oven rack in the centre of the oven, and preheat just in time to put the cake in the oven.”
½ cup (125 mL) butter, softened 1½ cups (375 mL) granulated sugar 1 large egg 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla 2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour 1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda ½ tsp (2 mL) salt 1 cup (250 mL) buttermilk 2 cups (500 mL) chopped rhubarb (½-inch/1.25-cm pieces)
Lunar Topping 1 cup (250 mL) firmly packed light brown sugar 2 tsp (10 mL) ground cinnamon ¼ cup (60 mL) butter, softened
1. Line a 13- by 9-inch (3.5 L) metal cake pan with parchment paper or butter pan thoroughly but lightly. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until well mixed and fairly smooth. Add the egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.
3. Set aside 1 tbsp (15 mL) of the flour. In a separate large bowl, whisk together remaining flour, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, making 3 additions of these dry ingredients and 2 of buttermilk.
4. Toss rhubarb with remaining 1 tbsp (15 mL) flour. Spoon over the batter and fold in. Scrape into the prepared pan, smoothing the top.
5. To make Lunar Topping: In bowl, mix together sugar and cinnamon. With a fork or pastry blender, work butter into the sugar mixture until crumbly. Sprinkle evenly over the batter.
6. Bake in the centre of 350 F (175 C) oven until the lunar topping is pitted and crusty and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Let cool on rack. Although you can cover and store the cake for up to 2 days at room temperature, it is best made and served the same day.