Rhubarb Cake

This Lemon Rhubarb Custard Cake is sweet, tangy and incredibly moist. It gets its name from its almost custard-like, gooey interior.

It’s all about the rhubarb.

I love cooking with rhubarb when the season rolls around. It’s such an interesting piece of produce, and I still can’t believe how this super sour, red celery-looking vegetable, can turn into a delicious dessert. My strawberry rhubarb pie from last year was definitely a favorite, but I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I spotted this rhubarb custard cake recipe from Bon Appetit and just had to give it a twirl.

What makes this a custard cake?

The texture of this cake is out of this world. It’s beyond moist and somewhat custardy, hence the name rhubarb custard cake. Now when I first tested this recipe, I stayed pretty true to Bon Appetit’s version. My only changes were omitting the rum and adding in a little vanilla bean paste.

When it came to the baking of the cake, well that was a different story. My oven currently is a bit of disappointment to be honest. It definitely makes creating recipes difficult sometimes. I use an oven thermometer to double check the temperature, but despite that measure, I find everything bakes quite a bit more slowly than it normally would. Also my oven tends to get much hotter on the outside than on the inside, which leads to some uneven baking.

So the first time I baked this cake, I far exceeded Bon Appetit’s suggested bake time of 45-55 minutes. I baked the cake for about 80 minutes, give or take, and believe it or not, it was still just baked through and set in center. I loved the browning and crispiness I got on top, but felt the texture of the cake, albeit moist, did not quite constitute “custard cake”.

Another slight issue I had with the cake was the level of sweetness. Now using the bitter rum may have leveled things out, and you want a sweet cake to balance out the sour rhubarb, but I wasn’t getting exactly what I wanted.

In the next test run, I decided to bump up the sour cream and add lemon juice in addition to the zest. Not only did these additions add acidity, but they also added moisture. I cooked the cake for approximately the same amount of time the second time around, but was left with such a beautiful custardy interior. You might need a practice run to get this Lemon Rhubarb Custard Cake just right in your kitchen, but it’s so easy to put together and so good, you won’t mind if you end up with an extra cake at the end of the day. Happy baking.

Print