Rhubarb Cake

One of the things that is growing well on the Lottie is Rhubarb so my friend Sue came over armed with a ton of baking bits and bobs to show me how to make Rhubarb Cake today.

My littlest was very keen to get involved and so with a bit of help weighing and such he got stuck in with the making and had a lovely fun using an electric whisk for the first time.

You will need

• 3 sticks of Rhubarb
• 6 tbl spoons water
• 4 tbl spoons sugar
• a few drops of vanilla essence 

• 5 oz of butter 
• 5 oz sugar
• 4 eggs
• 9 oz flour

Tiddler and I chopped up the Rhubarb in to  inch (ish) chunks and I then popped it in a pan with the water and sugar over a low heat to soften and sweeten it. You can put Vanilla essence in the pan too if you want but we forgot. Next we weighed out the butter and sugar and mixed it together in a big bowl. Then came 4 eggs cracked straight into the bowl while I weighed out the flour.

Sue whisked the eggs and butter/sugar together with a little flour and then added the rest of the flour and then little'un splattered the walls with lovely cake mix, top speed whisking and having a wonderful time pressing buttons and making a sticky mess until everything looked pretty well mixed.

By this time the Rhubarb had softened up well so I took it off the heat and let it cool a bit before Sue helped Ethan stir it in gently and tip the mixture in to a buttered and floured loaf tin. This went in the oven on gas mark 5 for 5 mins and then 4 for a further 35(ish).

When the cake was done Sue turned it out on to an upturned egg box covered with kitchen roll to let it cool as I don't have a cooling rack and me and the kids waited impatiently for it to cool. It was delish and tiddler and I both had seconds :-D

Happy Baking, Jolene xx

Plot 36, getting my hands dirty

When I left  Plot 36 two weeks ago Saturday I had only managed to move most of the bigger bits of junk strewn across the plot and cut down the majority of the brambles and taller weeds. I left a third of the plot covered with an old tarpaulin to try to suppress any further weed growth but did leave a strip uncovered that is about a meter wide and the full width of the plot along the left boundary where I found a Rhubarb crown growing. 

Since then, whilst waiting for my own set of site keys to be cut, I've been doing quite a bit of reading and fact finding, learning as much as I can about crop rotation and allotment pests. The children and I have also been and also planting our first few seeds at home in little pots on the kitchen windowsill, just 4 seeds each of purple sprouting broccoli, kohlrabi and heritage tomatoes (not sure which ones, they were taken from a seed mix of Chocolate Stripes, Green Zebras and Yellow Grape saved from last year's plants) and some Sweet Peas for the flower garden that will make up part of our plot.

I picked up the keys at the weekend and yesterday I went back for the first time on my own and spent an hour and a half clearing the Rhubarb bed, brilliant fun. The site gently slopes and our plot is at the bottom of the slope. After two weeks of torrential rain plot 36 is pretty boggy. Next job is to find out as much as I can about improving the drainage and what grows best on a soggy plot!

Jolene x