Although I completely gave up eating refined white sugar six years ago, I made an exception this year when rhubarb season rolled around (hint: NOW!!!), because: duh! Rhubarb!
My kids go out in the garden and suck on the stalks raw (NEVER eat the leaves, you know that, right?). The raw stalks are much too tart for me, so I transform them into the best German dessert that has been passed down to us from generation to generation.
Since I'm full blooded German, you know this stuff is authentic. Let me first introduce you to my grandma's rhubarb meringue cake. My mouth is watering as I write this, I swear to you.
German Rhubarb Meringue Cake
Ingredients:
Topping:
Dough:
~ 125 grams sugar (equals 3/4 cup)
~ pinch of salt
~ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
~ 2 eggs
~ 150 grams flour (equals 1 1/2 cups)
~ 50 grams round almonds or ground pecans (equals 3/4 cup)
~ 2 teaspoons baking powder
plus
~ some butter to butter pan
~ 25 grams sugar (equals 1/4 cup) to sprinkle over rhubarb
Meringue:
~ 150 grams sugar (equals 3/4 cup)
You need a 26 cm (10 inch or so) spring form pan.
Directions:
Wash rhubarb, dry it off well, then cut into 1/2 inch pieces.
For the dough, combine butter, sugar, salt and vanilla in a bowl. Mix it with a hand mixer until the sugar is dissolved.
Add one egg at a time and mix them in each time.
Combine flour, ground nuts, and baking powder, and gradually mix it into the wet ingredients.
Put the dough into a buttered spring form pan.
Add the rhubarb pieces and then sprinkle them with the other 1/4 cup sugar.
Bake on the second lowest oven rack in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
In the meantime, beat the egg whites stiff, then slowly add the sugar and beat until you have a firm, glistening mass.
After 30 minutes baking, spread the egg white mixture meringue on the cake, and if you want peaks to form, kind of fluff it with a fork to make little peaks.
Bake for another 15 minutes.
Let cool inside the spring form pan.
Note that the picture immediately above has meringue that I overbeat. The picture above this one is perfect meringue, with little fluffed up peaks. They both taste fine, they just look different.
Now for the pie recipe. My oldest son LOVES this, so I usually make a whole one for just him. I'm not kidding you.
Rhubarb pie
Ingredients:
2 Pie Crusts:
~ 3 cups flour
~ pinch of salt
~ 8 Tablespoons cold butter cut into 1 inch pieces
~ 2/3 cup ice cold water or more
In a food processor: Pulse flour, salt and butter until small pebbles form (about 10 times). Slowly add water until dough comes together. Don't overmix. Divide this into 2 pieces and form into 2 disks (5 inch diameter). Put in freezer for 1/2 hour to chill, then roll it out.
You can also make pie crust by hand instead of using a machine.
Filling:
~ 4 cups washed rhubarb, chopped into 1/4 inch slices
~ 1 1/3 cups sugar
~ 6 Tablespoons flour or corn starch
~ 1 Tablespoon butter
Directions:
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Put one pie crust into a buttered pie plate.
Combine sugar and flour or cornstarch. Sprinkle 1/3 cup of this onto the pie crust in the pie plate.
Put rhubarb on to of this and spread it out.
Sprinkle remaining sugar and flour mixture over it.
Dot this with small pieces of butter.
Cover this with the second crust and stab it with a fork to create holes for steam to escape.
Bake pie on lowest rack in oven. Bake for 15 minutes. Then reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for another 40 or 45 minutes.
