Rhubarb Mascarpone Ice-Cream

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All right, let's put the ice-cream I've been talking about for the better part of the last few weeks together.
All the different parts taste lovely by themselves, but trust me with this one, once you put this darling together you'll never want to go back.
I'll talk you through the timeline but if you are looking for the recipes of the various sub-recipes, follow the links below.

Rhubarb Mascarpone Ice-Cream
Lemony Mascarpone Ice-Cream
Rhubarb Compote
Caramel Sauce

If you have all three of these sitting in front of you, perfect, if you are just getting started I would make them in the following order:
Make the ice-cream and freeze.
Then you make the rhubarb compote.
Allow the compote to cool completely.
Make the caramel sauce and, again, let it cool completely.
After a few hours, check how your ice-cream is doing. If it is well on it's way to being frozen (i.e. if you are looking at something that is more slush than a very solid semifredo, it is not ready), find a freezer-proof container that is large enough to hold all three ingredients.
If you want to make the ice-cream the day before, that works just as well. In that case you might have to give it a few minutes to soften up a bit.
Using a large tablespoon, spoon some of the ice-cream into the new container. Don't worry about getting an even layer of ice-cream because that is not what we're after.
Add spoonfuls of the rhubarb compote, filling the dips in the ice-cream layer. Drizzle with some caramel sauce.
And then you repeat this until there is nothing left. I went for 3 'layers' but if you want the flavours to be more evenly distributed, you could also go for 5 or so.
Freeze for a few more hours or overnight.
Now, because we didn't churn the ice-cream and because it doesn't have a custard base, it will probably be fairly solid when you take it out of the freezer. I give mine about 15 minutes in the fridge before scooping the ice-cream into bowls. If you're really desperate, though, you can also scrape off thin shavings which taste just as nice but won't look as pretty.

Rhubarb Compote

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Today we'll be making the second part of the mascarpone and rhubarb ice-cream.
There is a third part (a caramel sauce) which I'll hopefully get to tomorrow and then we can assemble things.

Rhubarb is one of those vegetables that make even the rainiest day seem filled with sunshine. 

Perhaps that's because you know by the time you see rhubarb in the shops (unless it's the amazingly cute forced rhubarb you get in the UK) spring is in full swing and you won't have to wait for summer much longer.

Back in St Andrews, we had a rhubarb plant in the garden which meant whenever I felt like making compote or a tart, all I had to do was fight my way through wild flowers and weeds and was then rewarded with fresh, juicy, bright pink rhubarb stalks.

It also meant whenever I had no money left at the end of the month the chances of me using rhubarb would go up exponentially.

Now I have to walk to the farmers market (which, luckily, doesn't take much longer than cutting the stalks myself).

Anyhow, this compote is really nice by itself as well.

Or spooned over vanilla ice-cream, or with custard, or with yoghurt...the options are endless.

This is the very basic version of rhubarb compote that I make, if I  want something more colourful, I add raspberries like in the version for the Raspberry and Rhubarb Tartlets.

Rhubarb Compote
500g Rhubarb, cut into 1.5 cm pieces
100g Sugar

Mix the rhubarb and sugar in a heavy bottomed pot, cover and heat over the lowest possible heat.
Give the rhubarb 15 minutes or so to 'sweat'  and once the bottom of the pot is covered in rhubarb juice you can turn the heat up to medium high.
Cook until the rhubarb is soft but is still holding its shape. This could be anything from 5 to 15 minutes depending on how fresh/young your rhubarb is, so don't go running away to watch some old episodes of Vampire Diaries or whatever you like to watch.
Once the rhubarb is cooked through, remove it from the heat and let it cool slightly.
If you're using this for the ice-cream extravaganza, let the compote cool completely and then refrigerate it for a few more hours.
All right, I hope you have a fabulous evening! With lots of amazing food!

Frozen Rhubarb Fool

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While I am attempting to finally find a scone recipe that gives me scones the way I like them (we're on batch number 6 or so) I thought I could cheer us all up with a recipe that does actually work (unlike the scones saga...).
And before you say anything, I know I've been bombarding you with rhubarb recipes, but a) rhubarb is amazing and b) it grows in our garden and is free :)

Frozen Rhubarb Fool
300g Rhubarb, trimmed weight
75g Sugar
A pinch of Nutmeg
1/2 Vanilla Pod
1 tsp Rosewater
1/2 tsp Fleur de Sel
2 tbsp Rum
200ml Whipping Cream

Cut the Rhubarb into 2.5 cm pieces and combine with 50g of the sugar in a saucepan. Cover and heat at the lowest possible heat so the rhubarb 'sweats' for about 10 minutes. Once the rhubarb is swimming in its own juices turn up the heat a bit, then add the nutmeg and rosewater. Simmer until the rhubarb is cooked through. You can test the flavour now and, if you feel this is waaay to tart, add some more sugar (not from the 25g we put aside though, and keep in mind that we will be adding some sweet whipped cream to the rhubarb in a bit). Take the rhubarb off the heat and add the salt and the rum. We're adding these two to lower the freezing point a bit so our 'ice-cream' stays softer once we freeze it.
Allow the rhubarb to cool down completely, then whip the cream and the remaining 25g sugar and the seeds from the vanilla pod (keep the pod for flavouring another dish such as rice pudding). Try to not eat all of it (or is that just me who does that?) and fold in the rhubarb mix.
Freeze the mixture in a shallow dish (I tend to use an old ice cream container for this) and stir it with a fork every once in a while to make the crystals smaller. Obviously, if you have an ice cream maker scratch the previous sentence and let the ice cream maker work its magic.
Anyhow, I hope it is warm enough for lots and lots of ice cream where you are!
Do you have a favourite flavour at the moment? The rhubarb thing is turning into my favourite these days, but I've also been thinking of the blackberry one I made last year....and the plum one...and I really want to try those super cute rice pudding popsicles Nicky wrote about earlier this month.

Rhubarb Lattice Tart

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I know, it's been a while - I've been busy with writing, running, eating, swimming, sleeping, and a Buffy marathon (ok, if I'm perfectly honest not necessarily in that order) and I kinda stopped doing anything else.
So now that I finally feel like I'm on track with my writing again (and Spike saved the world :) ) I thought I could share a tart recipe with you. I made this tart for a dinner last week and I must say that I am slightly in love with this recipe. It all started with Oliver Peyton's Rhubarb Lattice Tart which looked amazing (the book - British Baking is gorgeous in general) but I never quite understood everyone's obsession with plain flour when making a dough that brings out the flavours of all it's ingredients (and we've had this bag of rye flour sitting around for a while now, and rhubarb and rye both start with r...ok, I'm just making up random reasons now).
Anyhow, I wasn't disappointed, the subtle sweetness of the rye flour brought out the flavour of the rhubarb without being overpowering.
The dough takes some time because you'll want to rest it a couple of times before you actually get to the point of filling the tart but the actual hands-on time for this tart is about 20 minutes. So I'd say it's the perfect desert if you're trying to get some writing done and don't have a clue what to bring to that dinner party later that night.
Oh, and I used a 24cm flan dish.

Rhubarb Lattice Tart
150g Plain Flour
100g Rye Flour
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Salt
175g Butter, cold, cut into 1cm pieces
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
Some really cold Water

500g Rhubarb (trimmed)
200g Sugar
2 tbsp Cornflour
A pinch of Salt

Mix the flours, sugar and salt in a bowl, then rub the butter into the dry ingredients. Just like with a normal pie dough you'll want the butter pieces to remain fairly large - think the size of a pea - because the water evaporating from those pieces of butter will turn the whole thing into flaky pastry goodness once you bake the dough.
Now you add the vinegar and about 8 tbsp of the water to the mix and start working everything together. You don't want a super-well mixed dough at this stage, you just want everything to come together in something resembling a lump. If you can't get the mix you have to hold together because it's too dry, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time.
Wrap the ball of dough in some cling-film (you can sprinkle the whole thing with a tiny bit of water before you wrap it) and let it rest in the fridge for at leas an hour (i.e. you can go and do some work now).
When you get back, unwrap the dough and place it on a floured surface and squeeze it into the shape of a rectangle before you start rolling it out with a rolling pin.
Don't worry if the dough starts out being slightly awkward to handle and bits and pieces falling off. This will get better in a couple of minutes.
Roll out the dough until it's about 20x30 cm in size.
Now fold the dough into thirds. I really like  Kim's explanation of this - she suggests you fold the dough like you would fold a letter. Once you've done that, rotate the dough by 90˚ and roll it out again.
Repeat the folding and rolling until you have folded the dough 3 times.
I guess you could skip the following step but I tend to prefer working with chilled pastry dough so I suggest you give the dough rectangle another hour or so in the fridge and get on with some more work :)
Cut the dough in half and stick one half straight back into the fridge.
Grease your flan dish.
Roll out the other half until it's big enough to line the flan dish.
Cover the lined flan dish with cling-film and chill it for another half an hour or so which will give you time to get the rhubarb ready.
Preheat your oven to 200˚C.
In a bowl combine the sugar, cornflour and salt.
Cut the rhubarb into 3cm pieces and toss them in the cornflour-sugar mixture.
Now take the flan dish out of the fridge and fill it with the rhubarb mix.
Do you remember that spare piece of pastry?
Take it out of the fridge and roll it out until it's about as thin as the other piece was before. Cut the pastry into 1cm strips and weave them into a lattice pattern covering the rhubarb. If you have some strips left at the end you can use them later to cover the lattice ends.
If you feel like it brush the lattice with an egg-wash (I tend to be lazy and just go for milk) then cover the rim with the spare pastry strips. They also like the egg-wash :)
Bake the tart for 45-55 minutes and allow it to cool before you remove it from the flan dish.
Serve by itself, with some custard, or some ice cream and a good gossip with some lovely people.

Rhubarb Tart

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The weather here is wonderful at the moment. It seems we have skipped spring and the weather reminds me more of early summer than of anything else.
So today I put on my most summery pair of jeans and headed out to the garden to cut some rhubarb.
I don't know about you but for me a fruit tart is what makes summer summery. What screams lazy Sunday afternoon like a tart you didn't have to do anything for other than make a quick shortcrust pastry and a simple custard?
I use a 24cm flan dish if you're wondering about sizes.

Rhubarb Tart
200g Flour
90g Butter
Salt
Cold Water
150g Rhubarb
80g Sugar
1 Egg
50ml Single Cream
50ml Milk
6cm piece of Vanilla Pod
Nutmeg

Mix the flour and a pinch of salt. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Then use just enough water to get a stiff dough. In my case I used 5 tablespoons but you might need more or less depending on your flour and the temperature etc.
Cover the dough in cling film and refrigerate it for 15 minutes or so.
Heat your oven to 190 ˚C.
Cut the rhubarb into 1.5 -2cm pieces. Sprinkle the rhubarb with half the sugar and set aside.
Grease your flan dish, roll out the pastry and line the flan dish with it.
Now, I like to partially blind-bake my shortcrust pastry but I've had spectacular tarts and pies that weren't blind baked so go for whichever approach you prefer.
Whisk the egg, remaining sugar, cream, milk vanilla (scrape the seeds into the mix) and nutmeg together.
If you are blind baking your pastry give it 5 minutes or so, otherwise just start filling :)
Spread out the rhubarb pieces evenly in the pastry, then pour the egg mix over the rhubarb.
Bake your tart for approximately 25 minutes or until the rhubarb is nice and soft.
Wait for 10 minutes or so until the tart has cooled down enough so you wont burn your fingers and enjoy it with some freshly whipped cream and some good coffee while feeling the sun on your skin.

Rhubarb and Polenta Muffins

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Last week I felt really old.

After being responsible adults and making sure that my bottle of Chase Gin (soo nice!!!) hadn't gone off, Verena and I spent the evening listening to 1980s music on youtube and looking at cookbooks.

And while I'm still slightly worried about my music taste I came across this lovely recipe for a Rhubarb and Cornflour Cake in Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a domestic goddess' which just sounded divine.

And compared to the other recipes in the book it's actually not that unhealthy (ok, still not healthy but you know what I mean....) :)

Sooo, since I've been trying to find something to do with all this rhubarb I've been hoarding in the freezer this was my chance.

I felt like making something slightly more girly than a loaf cake (something has to balance out the bad music...) These muffins/cupcakes (I think muffins sounds nice in the name but they feel a bit more like cupcakes) are super easy and reallyreally nice and if you're looking for something to bring to a birthday party you can feel all Stepford without the effort by making the yoghurt cream to go with it (which takes like 2 seconds).

Rhubarb and Polenta Muffins (makes 24)

700g Rhubarb
300g Sugar
150g Flour
150g Polenta
1tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda
A pinch of Salt
1tsp Cinnamon
1tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Eggs
125g Butter
250g Plain Yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line two muffin trays.
If you haven't already washed and trimmed the rhubarb now's the time :)
Cut the rhubarb into 1cm pieces, then mix with 100g of the sugar and set aside in a bowl.
In a bowl, mix the flour, polenta, bicarb, salt, and cinnamon.
Cream the butter and the remaining sugar. In case you haven't heard me drone on about creaming butter and sugar, it takes time :) give it about 5 minutes with a handheld mixer. I know, it's annoying, but it's really worth it. Listen to some embarrassing music on you ipod if you get bored.
Mix in the eggs, one at a time, then add the vanilla extract.
Add the dry mix and the yoghurt alternating as you go along. Since we're making faux-muffins, don't worry about everything being properly mixed, otherwise they can get a bit chewy.
Now add the rhubarb (including the juices), give it one last stir and then have fun trying to get similar amounts of rhubarb into each muffin paper.
Bake for about 20 minutes.
You can either eat them as they are, but if you're looking for something slightly more fancy, add some of the boozy yoghurt cream below.

Boozy Yoghurt Cream
200ml Whipping Cream
150g 0% Greek Yoghurt
1tbsp Sugar
2tbsp Desert Wine

Whip the cream with the sugar until soft peaks form (gosh I love writing this!), mix the greek yoghurt and the wine, then fold into the whipped cream.
Done :)

Rhubarb Juice

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I don't feel like food today so you get a juice recipe :)
When I discovered that we have rhubarb in our garden a couple of weeks ago I didn't quite know what to do with it. I had just made the rhubarb tartlets and was still eating the leftovers of the raspberry and rhubarb compote. But then I remembered a rhubarb juice that I had a few years back and how refreshing it had been.
Since making this I have come across another rhubarb juice in Silvena Rowe's 'Purple Citrus & Sweet Perfume' which had some cinnamon added (which sounds absolutely glorious to me).
The recipe below should make about 500ml juice.

Rhubarb Juice
400g Rhubarb cut into 2cm pieces
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 4 oranges
Zest of 1 orange
100ml Water
1-2 tbsp Sugar

Put the rhubarb, the juice, the zest and the water into a heavy bottomed pan, bring to the boil, give it a few minutes until the rhubarb looks like it's starting to fall apart.
Remove from the heat, add the sugar, and let it cool down (or just leave it for a couple of hours and do something productive).
Strain the juice and enjoy it with some soda water or some tonic water.

Raspberry and Rhubarb Tartlets

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This one is for you Mama! And no cheating and asking someone to help you with the translation ;)

A while ago my mum asked me for a recipe that she could make for coffee with friends. One of the first things that I had to think about was the lovely cover photo of Kim Boyce's 'Good to the Grain'.
Unfortunately I seem to have this weakness that I can't just use a recipe as it is and I have to start changing things all the time (and yes, in case you wonder, a lot of the time it goes all horribly wrong, I'm thinking of a certain Brownie debacle, Sandra....).
So this weekend a, no doubt, amazing rhubarb tart recipe turned into an experiment that fortunately worked rather well :)
You'll have to make a compote either the night before or in the morning (doesn't take long though, so no worrying!!) and the only other thing is, the dough is a bit of a pain to handle, don't ask the girls about the language that was used in my kitchen the evening I made them - if you're hoping for a fun recipe that is going to make you feel like a domestic goddess, stay away from this recipe! If you're tired and have just come home from a long day at work, don't go for it! If you're all relaxed and happy anyway and you're looking for an amazingly crumbly, buttery and flaky (in a good way) tartlet this is just the recipe you're looking for.

Raspberry and Rhubarb Compote
750g-1kg Rhubarb
250g Raspberries
250g Golden caster sugar
1tbsp Rosewater

What you do now depends on what your rhubarb looks like. The one I had wasn't that tender anymore so I decided to peel some of it in the hope to get rid of some of the not-so-nice bits. If you've got some young and lovely rhubarb (like the one I discovered in my garden after buying some) all you'll have to do is rinse it and cut off the ends.
Depending on the size of the stalks you might want to cut them in half lengthwise. Then you cut them into 1.5cm chunks.
Set aside about 300g of the rhubarb and mix the rest with the raspberries and the sugar in a pot and cover with a lid.
Turn your hob quite low and slowly heat up the mix (don't think you can speed up this part, give it the time it needs). This takes about 15 minutes.
Once the fruit is swimming in gorgeous rhubarb juice, take off the lid and turn the heat a bit higher. Add the rosewater. Cook until the rhubarb is all broken down and the liquid begins to thicken. Keep stirring at this stage, don't just run off to chat to your mum :). This should take just under 20 minutes.
Stir in the rhubarb you put on the side, leave on the heat for another couple of minutes and then pour the compote onto a large dish (I used a stoneware gratin dish) and allow it to col down.
Once it's completely cooled down the compote likes to live in the fridge.

Right, now let's get to the tartlets.

Raspberry and Rhubarb Tartlets
60g Corn flour
125g Spelt flour
125g Fine cornmeal
80g Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
115g Butter (cold and cut into small chunks)
90ml Cream
2 Egg yolks

Mix the dry ingredients, add in the butter and mix until it's well incorporated and looks all crumbly and lovely. Add the cream and the yolks and mix well. Don't be tempted to add water or anything, the dough will look fairly crumbly.
Divide the dough into 10 pieces. On a lightly floured work surface flatten each piece until they are about 12cm in diameter. Spoon 4 tbsp of the compote onto the centre of each base and then fold the edges up. For me that was when I was nearing despair. My edges didn't really want to stay up. Keep trying and keep telling yourself that it's not supposed to be picture perfect but that you're going for a rustic look (and that the taste is going to be soo worth it!!).
Use one of those handy bench scrapers to slide under a tart, pick it up and place it onto a plate or a baking sheet (if you want to make your life easier, put a layer of clingfilm onto the plate beforehand)
and put the tarts into your freezer so they can harden.
Note: If your freezer is small think about what size plates you can fit into it :)
Your tarts can stay in the freezer anything between an hour and two weeks.
Right, nearly there, heat your oven to 190 degrees, put the tarts onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 30-40 minutes until the tarts are the most amazing golden brown.
Enjoy them still slightly warm or cold.
Hmmm, I'll be dreaming of tartlets while working on my code today.....