Every year just about this time, I cast about for some new thing to make out of rhubarb. This year, our good friend Ruth Thurston in Machias, unasked, sent along a recipe for Rhubarb Coffee Cake. Her daughter had visited, and they tinkered with a recipe Ruth had clipped years ago from a newspaper, substituting sour cream for buttermilk, and using white sugar instead of brown. Then, she wrote, “We halved it and baked it in a nine-by-nine pan.” They liked the result, she reported, and we all are the beneficiaries of their experiment.
I am using my rhubarb gradually. I discovered a while back that if I pick the blossoms off as they appear, and discard them or use them in a bouquet, I can keep the plant from dying off as early as it will if I allowed it to go to seed. So far this year, I have made two big batches of sorbet and set up some rhubarb in vodka to make a cordial. I’ll make rhubarb crisp at least once.
When it comes to baked goods, Ruth and I have similar tastes. This little cake is a good example: quick, easy, and just-right sweet. For fun, I added a little freshly grated nutmeg to the cake part. If you decide to make a half cake as Ruth reported that she and her daughter did, and as I did when I tried it, don’t worry about half an egg. Use the smallest one you have.
Rhubarb Coffee Cake with Streusel Topping
Cake
1 cup of sugar
½ cup of butter
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon soda
½ teaspoon nutmeg (optional)
2 cups rhubarb, diced
Streusel Topping
½ cup sugar
½ cup walnuts, chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a nine-by-thirteen pan. Assemble the cake, cream together the sugar and the butter, beat in the egg and buttermilk. Whisk or sift together the flour, soda, and optional nutmeg, and add it to the sugar, butter, egg, buttermilk mixture. Mix all together completely, and then fold in the rhubarb. Spread in the baking pan.
Mix the topping by combining the sugar, walnuts, cinnamon, and melted butter, and distributing it over the top of the cake batter.
Bake for forty-five to fifty minutes. Serve warm.
Makes one nine-by-thirteen cake.