Rhubarb Recipes

Preparing strawberry-rhubarb pie today.

The season is turning, even though a spate of rainy days has kept off some of the expected summer heat. I'm glad there's still rhubarb to harvest -- it's the first crop of spring, most years, and doesn't always last all that long! Weather and "pests" (like snails) can easily take it out of commission.

Today is a strawberry-rhubarb pie day here, which reminds me that I promised to post rhubarb recipes after the local "Historical House & Garden and Rhubarb Café" event had concluded. (People who attended were offered a lovely booklet of the recipes!) So here are some to enjoy.

CHOCOLATE RHUBARB BROWNIES

Best if cut only as small as 9 servings, but we managed 25 for the event!

• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup unbleached flour
• ⅓ cup cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup rhubarb, diced small
• ½ cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375. Lightly grease an 8 x 8 inch baking pan.

In a medium-sized bowl whisk together the sugar, vegetable oil, eggs, and vanilla. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, espresso powder, and sea salt.

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix them until they are just incorporated. Add the rhubarb and chocolate chips and mix until they are combined. The batter will be quite thick.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish and spread it out so that it is even in the pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or just until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Be careful not to overcook the brownies so they don't dry out! Cool completely before cutting. 

FROSTED RHUBARB COOKIES

Maked 5 dozen. I baked and froze mine a week ahead of time, then frosted them on the day I wanted to serve them.

Preheat oven to 350º. Lightly grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

Stir together:

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

Cream together in a large bowl:

¼ cup (1/2 stick) softened butter

¾ cup shortening

1½ cups firmly packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

Add flour mix to sugar/shortening/egg mix and stir well.

Stir in:

¾ cup flaked coconut

1½ cups diced fresh rhubarb (diced small)

Drop by tablespoonfuls onto baking sheets. Bake 12-15 minutes. Cool on rack.

Frost when cool.

Frosting

Beat together:

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 Tbsp butter, softened

3 tsp vanilla extract

1½ cups confectioner’s sugar

RHUBARB PUNCH

Cut in small pieces 3 pounds rhubarb (should make 2 dry quarts).

Add 2 quarts water and cook until fruit is soft. Drain through double layer of cheesecloth -- you will find a lovely pink juice released from the "green" mash!

Add 3 cups sugar and bring to a boil. Add 1 cup orange juice and 1/2 cup lemon juice.

Chill. Measure, and add equal volume of chilled ginger ale -- or for a lower sugar version, use a sparkling water like Perrier. Serve with crushed ice.

Jean's Chewy Maple Cookies

Left side, cut with pizza cutter! Right side, recipe working much better.

My good friend Jean shared her recipe yesterday for Chewy Maple Cookies -- yumm! Baking them today, I used the "very strong dark" maple syrup that Goodrich's Maple Farm in Cabot, Vermont, provides for cooks. I also tried substituting whole wheat flour for part of the white flour in the original recipe -- not a success at first, as the whole wheat flour didn't absorb the liquid, and the cookies spread into a sheet of cooked dough on the (parchment-lined) pan. A few quick strokes with the pizza cutter turned things back into snack form, but I still wanted the cookie shape, so with the other half of the dough I raised the amount of flour.

Here's my final "revised" version -- and Jean, thank you very much!

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

Stir together:
1-1/2 (one and one half) cups unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
dash salt
1 cup finely chopped walnuts (I put the regular chopped ones in a small plastic bag and run the rolling pin over them a couple of times to make them finer)

In a large bowl, beat with hand mixer:
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup dark maple syrup (if you can't get dark, use light but add Jean's extra ingredient: 1/2 tsp maple flavoring)

Stir in dry ingredients. Drop dough by generous teaspoonfuls onto parchment-lined or greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen.

Maple Pecan Pie

Sugaring season is close to the end around here (northeastern Vermont) -- one local family said today they had made 35 gallons of maple syrup from their home sugarbush and sugarhouse (35 times 40 = 1400 gallons of sap to do that!). They'll be washing out their buckets tomorrow.

And tomorrow I'll be meeting readers and selling my Vermont mysteries at the St. Albans (Vermont) Maple Festival, so I'm getting in the mood for the sweet celebration! Here's my best maple pecan pie recipe; it has some "pauses" in the process, so watch the timing if you're in a rush.

Heat and boil for 1 minutes, then let cool to lukewarm (ideal to place out on a chilly back porch!):
3/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup

Make a single-crust pie dough recipe, roll out, and fit into the pan; put it in the freezer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Whip eggs, whisking in the lukewarm syrup mixture, vanilla, and salt and then stirring in the pecans:
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1-1/2 (one and one half) cups pecan halves

Fill pie shell with mixture. Bake at 350, placed low in the oven, for 55 minutes. Cool before serving.

Oatmeal Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chips OR with (2018 Update) Rhubarb

Had a request today for this recipe, and it's worth sharing it -- it's based on the back-of-the-box recipe from Quaker Oats, but I've been adapting it to my taste (and cupboard) for the past 35 years. When I learned that "brown sugar" in stores was actually just white sugar with molasses added, I changed the recipe to reflect this -- and not pay the higher price of brown sugar! I've found different kinds of rolled oats ("quick" or 5-minute or health-food-store organic) make different textures of the cookie. Lately I use the health-food-store organic, because it's what I have in the house, but I think the recipe sometimes works better with the 5-minute type -- sort of halfway between the textures of the organic and the "quick." And for the chocolate chips, my own taste now is suited best by the Ghirardelli "60% cocoa" bittersweet chips, not as sweet, but I've made plenty of batches of cookies with Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips.

You can vary this by adding coarsely chopped walnuts, or dried cranberries (about half a cup of either one), or you can use raisins; if you do raisins and chocolate chips together, it tastes terrific. If you do raisins without chocolate, add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the flour. UPDATE, May 2018: Add 2 cups of finely chopped (but not crushed; a quarter inch is good) fresh rhubarb if you like! But this version needs to be eaten within a day or so, because the rhubarb has so much moisture.

And definitely, you can make the recipe without the chocolate chips, for plain oatmeal cookies. I've tried whole wheat flour in it and find the cookies get too heavy, but it's worth experimenting if that's what you like. And oh yes, ALL flour varies, even from day to day, so if your first pan of cookies all sort of "melt flat" and come out too thin, add another 2 tablespoons of flour to the remaining dough before making the next pan of them.

           Beth's Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease two large cookie sheets. (I now use the insulated cookie sheets; if you don't have them and you are using thin metal, you might try 325º instead and add 2 minutes longer cooking. That's what I used to do. And you can avoid greasing the cookie sheets if you use parchment paper on them.)

Mix together in a large bowl, using a wooden spoon:

3/4 cup vegetable shortening (like Crisco)
1-1/4 (that's one and a quarter) cups sugar
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix in a small bowl:
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

Dump the flour into the shortening/sugar mix, and mix until mostly blended. Add:

2-1/2 cups rolled oats
6 ounces (half a large pack, or an entire small pack) chocolate chips (and see above for other additions)

Spoon onto the cookie sheets, about a tablespoon of dough per cookie, with an inch and a half between cookies.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets right away and cool on racks. (If you don't have cookie cooling racks, or you're not sure you'll have time or energy to take the cookies off the cookie sheets right away, try using "parchment paper" on your cookie pans, instead of greasing them with shortening. Then you can lift the whole sheet of paper off at once, with all the cookies, and set this to cool on a countertop or table. I try to keep some around, now that I've found out how handy it is.)

That's it! Have fun.

A Different Holiday Treat: Pumpkin Coffee Cake

My husband is not a pumpkin pie fan, but I am -- yet making a pumpkin pie for one person is usually not smart, because the extra slices don't freeze well. But cake slices do! So this recipe has become one of my favorites. It's also easy to share slices or more, with neighbors. I've made a couple of changes to it over the years since 1990: I use yogurt instead of sour cream, because I'm more likely to have it around. And the original last layer of topping was a streusel with butter and nuts, and I've simplified it to just brown sugar. There's already plenty of butter in the cake, and nuts can be an issue with a lot of people that I like to give treats to.

PUMPKIN COFFEE CAKE

Preheat the oven to 330 degrees, and grease a 13 by 9 inch pan.

Into a small bowl, measure out and lightly crumble with fingers:
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar

In a medium bowl, mix with a fork:
1 can pumpkin (the 15-ounce size; about 2 cups)
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

In another medium bowl, stir together:
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

In large bowl, either by hand or with an electric mixer, cream togetherL
1/2 cup (1 stick) soft butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Add to large bowl, one at a time and beating well:
3 eggs

Measure out:
1 cup yogurt or sour cream

Now, add the flour mix and the yogurt or sour cream, alternately, to the big bowl, in two or three stages, beating each time. You should have a nice light buttery batter.

Spread HALF of the batter in the greased pan. Gently, spread over this the pumpkin mix. Then "dollop" the rest of the batter on top (I do it with 12 evenly spaced spoonfuls). Using your fingers, sprinkle the brown sugar over the top as a last layer.

Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Cool to room temperature before serving.

NOTE: If you don't have yogurt or sour cream, this recipe can also be done with 1 cup milk, BUT you need to change the 1 tsp baking powder plus 1 tsp baking soda, to 2 tsp baking powder instead, if you use milk.

"Batter Bread": Getting the Whole Wheat Recipe Right

I copied down a batter bread recipe (quick, simple, and no kneading!) from a Fanny Farmer cookbook back in 1990, and used it (slightly modified) often while feeding teens. Then, a couple of years into my marriage to Dave (we got together in 2002), I made a batch of this bread for him. He grew up on great bakeries in New Haven, CT, and the rather flat profile of this loaf didn't impress him. But in my regular bread pans, because the batter is pretty soft, I just couldn't get the loaf to rise to his standards (pun intended!).

The solution turned out to be not changing the recipe, but the pan. The one shown here really works nicely because it's narrower and has a better ratio of width to depth for batter breads. It hold quite a bit of batter, so instead of a 2-load recipe, this now makes one loaf plus a few mini items (muffins or small breads). The molasses gives it a lovely rich flavor.

GRAHAM BATTER BREAD

In large bowl, mix:
1/4 cup molasses or honey
1/2 Tbsp salt
2-1/2 cups very warm water

In mixing cup, stir together and let sit for 5 minutes:
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 Tbsp dry yeast (or 1 packet)

After the yeast is dissolved and a bit bubbly, add the yeast/water mix to the first mix and beat in:
3 cups whole wheat flour (I use locally grown and milled, but King Arthur also works well)

Then stir in
3 cups unbleached white flour

Cover and let rise half an hour or until doubled in size. Stir it back down and divide into greased pans. Cover loosely (a tent of waxed paper will work) and let rise until the batter is near the tops of the pans (20 minutes is usually enough).

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes (30 minutes for "muffin pan" sizes). Tip out of pans to cool on rack.

Apple Cake: Best Version Yet!

Autumn is apple season in Vermont, and last month when Dave's sis visited, I celebrated by baking an apple cake. (She helped!) This one is made with Empire apples -- not as soft as a Mcintosh, but still soft enough to give the right "feel" after baking. I've also fine-tuned the recipe in some other ways: There is a "secret ingredient" that I've adopted after seeing it in a few recipes that King Arthur Flour provides. It's an extract called Fiori Di Sicilia (flowers of Sicily, yes?) and mingles vanilla and citrus at once. If you don't have access to it, substitute a tablespoon of freshly grated orange rind and an extra half teaspoon of vanilla -- but I really like the way this extract scents the entire cake.

Here we go:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan, preferably the kind that comes as two pieces (in a pinch you can do this in a pair of 9 by 5 inch bread pans, but it's prettier with the tube pan).

Stir together:
2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar

Peel and slice 5 large apples (Empire preferred; should amount to 5 cups) and place the slices in a large bowl; stir in the cinnamon-sugar mix and let sit while you do the rest.

Beat in large mixer bowl:
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup orange juice
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
few drops (about 1/8 tsp) Fiori Di Sicilia (see note above)

In a separate bowl stir together:
3 cups unbleached flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl and beat only until well mixed.

Layer by thirds into the pan: one-third of the batter, then lay onto it one-third of the apples, and repeat twice more. If you're particular, make sure to save the prettiest apple slices for the top layer.

Bake 1-1/2 hours until golden on top. (If you used bread pans, start checking after just 1 hour.) Let cool 10 minutes and then remove the outer part of the tube pan. If it works for you, carefully lift the cake off the inner part, too. (It almost never works that way for me, so I slice the cooled cake carefully until the remainder will come off the inner part of the pan. Nothing wrong with serving this as a platter of slices!)

A note about the recipe: This version began from a Joan Nathan version that she calls "Jewish" Apple Cake, noting that the fact that the cake is made with oil, not butter, may have encouraged the name. Note that many "Jewish" apple cake recipes are designed to have layers of apple that ripple more in the finished cake. The rise in the oven will separate these slices enough, though, so that the finished cake is less regular than the layering makes it sound. I have also tried this with 1 of the cups of flour replaced with a finely ground whole wheat flour, which worked well; more than that, and Dave would realize that I was trying to turn the dessert into something overly "healthy."