… so i’ve just spent the day demo-cooking at the Lincolnshire Show, which went very well thank you for asking… and I browsed sheepishly over my much neglected blog and realised that if I don’t post something soon it may shrivel into a tired old husk… much the way i’m feeling right now… so I thought i’d whip up a cake, also killing two birds with one stone as this months alphabakes has the letter R as its messiah… and so here I am, thinking about the kind of simple cake I can bake when i realise that not only do I have no butter in the house but I have a very small amount of white sugar, no flour other than spelt, no scales to measure anything with and only two eggs. It’s not that times are hard it’s just that nearly all my equipment is at the show ready for my second day tomorrow and after a midnight flight from London last night I didn’t stop off at the supermarket for basic…
… but would I do a thing like let you good folk down… would I heck… and with a quick ‘forage’ into dear neighbour Tracey’s rhubarb patch, a lot of free-form cake ingredient improvisation and a frustrating ten minutes converting grams into cups I give you quite a lovely cake… thank you very much…
rhubarb, olive oil and spelt cake
you can see that the cake has a very puddingy quality to it that I simply adore… this was not intentional, it is ever so slightly underdone but did I also mention that I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to prep some lovely foragers quiches for the show (the general public are gannets I tell you… GANNETS!) and the right hand side of my lovely, not that old oven blew a fuse, rendering me with just one regular oven… sounds like i’m griping doesn’t it… well I am. I’m tired and i’m grumpy and i’m going to miss my friends this weekend…
2 cups spelt flour
1 1/2 cups ground almonds
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon orange water
2 teaspoons ground ginger
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 large free-range eggs
300mil milk
8 stalks of rhubarb – chopped
preheat the oven to 190C and grease a 23cm springform cake tin
combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk all the wet ingredients in another bowl, then pour the wet into the dry and stir together
pour a third of the cake batter into the cake tin and then layer on half the rhubarb, then another third of the batter and the rest of the rhubarb followed by the remaining cake batter
bake for about 45 mins until risen and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean
the alphabakes challenge is brought to you by Caroline from Caroline Makes and Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker… this months letter of inspiration is R…
eat and of course, enjoy!
I think you deserve an award for baking this after the day you've had and with the limitations! A lovely piece of cake and I'm gutted that we'll miss you this weekend but hope everything goes well for you x
This looks like a beautiful cake. I love rhubarb and puddingy cakes so it's just perfect !!
I love rhubarb in cakes. Haven't tried it with the spelt flour. A great combination of flavours and textures
Looks lovely and healthy too. Hope you enjoyed a piece with a coffee to revive you.
Isn't it amazing just what one can do when one knows a few things about baking and ingredients and just how to make the magic ?!? Splendiferous cake, my dear!
Looks so delicious and soft!
xox
Cor blimey it's all going on! Great cake Dom I would love to give it a try. Congratulations/best of luck with your demos!
Rhubarb always reminds me of growing up. We had a small garden that had two rows of rhubarb and each year, my mom would send us out to pick some so she could make strawberry rhubarb pie. Great memories, actually.. thank you for that!
The cake looks and sounds wonderful, Dom… thanks for sharing!
A fabulous cake, the flavours sound wonderful and the photograph confirms it. I do hope your oven is fixed quickly, it's so frustrating to be unable to use it, I'm sure your audiences are enjoying your demonstrations and not just the yummy samples!
This looks gorgeous dom! And is probably as healthy as cake can get, what with olive oil and spelt. I use spelt a lot in my baking, and often just swap out the wheat flour in recipes for spelt because I like it and it's easier on the tummy; it mostly works althoguh i've had a few disasters especially if it's some sort of bread oops. I'm not the best baker definitely anyway.. this one is bookmarked for sure!
I don't know how you can come up with these things off the cuff like this, this cake is so pretty, and I bet healthy, too. I've never used spelt, it sounds very exotic.
I loved that you used olive oil in this yummy looking cake. There has been so much controversy with canola oil that I love a cake recipe that features olive oil. The rhubarb doesn't hurt either. Nice recipe Dom!
This sounds so delicious with the rhubarb and ground almonds! I've not tried spelt flour yet but I am inspired to try it.
I've finished the last piece so you need to bake some more