upside down rhubarb and ginger cake

upside down rhubarb and ginger cake

• 25 Jul 2022

It's been quite a cold wet winter here in Sydney and I've been craving wintery puddings. Last night I fancied a rhubarb pudding and when I looked online I had loads of recipes to choose from but as I've had this Gill Meller recipe bookmarked for quite some time, I decided to make an upside down rhubarb and ginger cake. Gill mentioned that the cake was best served warm topped with custard or double cream, so who was I to disagree and I went down the custard route.

 

The recipe calls for stem ginger which is really hard to find in Sydney. I usually make my own but I'd run out. Luckily when searching through my fridge I found a small bottle of stem ginger I'd bought some years ago in South Africa. I also found a bottle of ginger marmalade during my search and I think a few tablespoons of that would be an excellent substitute for stem ginger. Otherwise just chop up some crystallized ginger and use golden syrup instead of ginger syrup.

 

Here's the recipe for you which makes an 8 inch cake. I accidentally used a 7 inch cake tin instead of an 8 inch cake tin so the cake took a bit longer to bake, about 50 minutes. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

 

Rhubarb and ginger upside-down cake inspired by a Gill Meller recipe
Base 

10g melted butter

1 tbs raw caster sugar

200g (6–8) rhubarb stalks

Cake 

65g self raising flour
60g whole meal plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1⁄2 tsp baking powder

pinch of fine sea salt

125g unsalted butter, softened and cut into small pieces

135g raw caster sugar
2 eggs
10g stem ginger preserved in syrup, chopped or 2 tbs ginger marmalade
1 tbsp ginger syrup (from the stem ginger jar)

2 tbs milk

Method

Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan. Cut a circle of baking paper to fit the base of a 20cm (8in) springform cake tin.

Generously brush the baking paper with melted butter, remove the lined base from the ring of the tin and sprinkle over the tbs caster sugar. Arrange the rhubarb stalks over the base side by side, trim the edges so you’re left with a nice disc of stalks that covers the base. Grease the ring of the cake tin with the remaining butter and dust with flour, then pop the base (complete with rhubarb in place) into the ring and secure with the clip.

Sift the flours together with the baking powder and salt. Beat the butter and 135g caster sugar together until light and fluffy. (Alternatively, you can do this in a stand mixer.) Beat in the eggs one at a time, sprinkling in 1 heaped teaspoon of flour mixture with each addition of egg.

Using a spoon, fold in the remaining flour mixture, the chopped ginger and syrup or ginger marmalade if using and enough milk to make a smooth batter. Spoon the mixture carefully over the rhubarb in the tin, spreading it out lightly and evenly.

 

Place the cake in the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 5–10 minutes and then turn out onto a serving plate, so that the rhubarb is on the top. Sprinkle with a little caster sugar and serve topped with custard or cream

 

I got a little fancy cutting the rhubarb but next time I won't bother because the rhubarb all turned to mush during the baking process. The cooked rhubarb lost most of it's vibrant colour as well so I glossed it up with some thinned raspberry jam just before serving. It still tasted delicious though!

See you all next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian