I have been looking forward to this cake for a while!! It is the cake that is on the cover of Martha's cookbook, and along with the cake there are Candied Rhubarb twirls. I decided to leave this cake till Summer, because my grandmother always has heaps of rhubarb growing in her garden. She says that she does nothing to them and they just pop up every year, but I secretly think that she must put some special compost or something over the soil for it to always be so well crowded with rhubarb ;) haha
Picking and cutting the rhubarb from the garden
Getting the recipe all ready for baking
Measuring out the rhubarb
Boiling the rhubarb in sugar syrup
Grating the rhubarb to make the candied rhubarb twirls
Rhubarb strips. They look amazing!!
The awesome party of rhubarb and sugar syrup going on in the kitchen ;)
Boiled rhubarb ready to be placed on the cake before going in the oven
Sugar syrup ready to be a bath for the rhubarb strips
Dipping the rhubarb strips into the sugar syrup for the oven to dehydrate them ;)
The candied rhubarb procedure
Laying the rhubarb out on the oven tray in an orderly manner ;)
We then baked them on a low temperature for an hour, after which we should be able to twist them and then they would harden like the ones in the picture on the cook book. Well, hopefully ;)
Making the cake batter.
Just so you guys know, even baking students, who are becoming experts, make mistakes ;) haha.
So, I am not used to using decilitres, which is the Finnish unit of measurement. So I accidentally ended up making 4 * the amount in the cook book ;) Please don't laugh, it was very stressful!! ;)
So after a tad bit of unknowing what to do, we decided to divide the batter up and try to recreate it into one cake. Then we would leave the rest of the batter to bake into more cakes the next day.
Cake 1# out of the oven ;)
I have to say, it tasted very puddingish :) The rhubarb really cut through the sugariness: perfect combo!!
Unfortunately the rhubarb twists did not work out too well :( They tasted burnt, so we had to throw them out :( I will try making them again sometime
Cake 2# looked much lighter and the rhubarb did not sink to the bottom. I think it must be thanks to the extra flour that I added :D
Success!!
Even though we went through some tough times trying to get the cake to work, it came out amazing in the end!! I am so thankful to my grandmother and mother for putting up with my unknowingness ;)
This cake turned out amazing!! It is one to add to any home that has access to rhubarb!! :D
Below is an excerpt from a page called "More than a refuge", which discuss lives that have been affected by the labelling of a refugee. A guy named Ghasen was interviewed in Jordan, Iraq, and he was among those who was labelled a refugee. He ended up finding joy in the suffering when he found that Tearfund ran an exercise class for refugee men:
‘These classes have given all of the participants self confidence and to have hope in life,’ Ghassan tells us. ‘There are other organisations that support us with food. It is important, but for me food is not more important than my soul. This helps me to be more at peace.’
If this brings so much joy to refugees, imagine what joy we have the power to place in other people's lives through the simply acts that we can all do together. For example, just baking for or with a friend, or doing exercises with your mum and friend (Hey Pamela!!). The list is, really, endless. These simple acts have the ability to turn suffering into joy. And if that is all it takes, why would we not be bounding to do all that we can to make a difference in other people's lives?
We, at The Baking Students, are hoping that this blog will be a vessel to bring even just a little joy into people's lives. Even just by showing people how joyful baking can be through our laughing banter ;)
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