Rhubarb Cake

My Mum made this rhubarb cake ages ago, May 2008 to be precise. It was delicious and I asked her to email me the recipe and that is how I know (I'm not THAT obsessed with food!). I haven't made it since then. Rhubarb is in season and they had large bunches on the market stall this week for £1 each. I love rhubarb and especially rhubarb crumble but I thought I'd like to do something slightly different and something portable so that I could take it to the picnic.

So you need:

For the base                                                          
300g Rhubarb
Juice of half a lemon
165g self-raising flour
175g butter
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

for the topping

25g butter
2 tbsp self-raising flour
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp ground ginger

1. Set the oven at 180 degrees C (160 for fan ovens)
2. Grease a cake tin or in my case a lasagne dish!
3. Chop the rhubarb into 3cm lengths and mix with lemon juice
4. Cream together butter and sugar, mix in flour, eggs and vanilla extract.

The recipe says whisk together the ingredients in 4. but I tried that and the butter just went into little lumps. It didn't make any difference to the overall taste though.

5. Fold half the rhubarb into the batter mix and spoon it into the tin. Scatter the remaining rhubarb over the top.

6. Make the topping by rubbing the butter into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and ginger and sprinkle over the cake.

Bake for 50 minutes and then leave to cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

The result is a really moist sponge with a subtle gingery topping and lovely chunks of rhubarb throughout. Mr VST and I had to try it before serving it to my family of course so we had some with ice cream. It was equally delicious cold and eaten as a cake today.