Rhubarb crisp and trying to take notes
How do you document your recipes?
Please first rewatch (or watch! if you haven’t already seen) the marvelous Rhabarberbarbara video. How amazing is German?
A beautiful bouquet of rhubarb from a farm stand on the North Fork, LI
I write mainly to attempt to note-take on baking with rhubarb as a person who rarely measures and always loses her notes. I don’t see much point in following recipes strictly unless you are learning how to make something elemental — there are so many variables in ingredients and of course food is all about individual taste, but of course, there is such value in actually documenting how you made something the way you like it, because then you recreate it. This, I’m trying to get better at.
For a couple of weeks, it has been beautiful and glorious rhubarb everywhere throughout New York, but my rhubarb baking started a little earlier, when I uncovered a bag of rhubarb that I froze last season.
And so I baked this smitten kitchen snacking cake - I can’t remember many adjustments, except for omitting lemon zest and ginger from the cake batter. I wasn’t in the mood and remember it baking up so plush and delicious, but wishing there was more rhubarb. And also realizing that somehow, I had converted to preferring pie to cakes.
Onwards!
Rhubarb pie from Petee’s Pie cookbook
David then brought back a 2lb haul of rhubarb, with which I baked a rhubarb pie, using the Petee’s Pie cookbook recipe because it is her pies that converted this former Amy’s Bread pink cake addict (still the best cake!). It was perfect and called for 3/4 cup (150g sugar) to roughly 1 1/4 pound (565 g) of rhubarb. I followed her recipe to the T as a fairly nervous pie baker (no lemon, potato starch instead of tapioca) and it was perfection.
I made a rhubarb compote of sorts with the rest of the rhubarb, showering in goji berries for sweetness along with some drizzles of honey. This just to demonstrate how incapable of measuring anything when I cook, and only do so when I bake, and even when I bake, I rarely note the little adjustments I make (i.e., subbing in different flours and sweeteners, adjusting amounts, adding spices etc…). If I do, I do it in various notebooks that I constantly misplace (in a 1 bedroom apartment! HOW!?), cryptic notes in the Notes app that I forget about, and scribbled in the margins of books or on post-its I stick to the fridge. Organized people, how do you do?
A note from November 2022, likely a recreation of the miso pudding at the Sunken Harbor Club, which I remember was topped with unsweetened whipped cream and showered with toasted coconut flakes. OFC there is no note of that in my notes.
Despite the chaos, it seems that I (aided my David’s continued purchasing of vast quantities of rhubarb) to hone in on rhubarb experiments. As the addition of goji berries foreshadowed, I veer from churning vats of full-fat ice cream to deciding that anyone can make white flour, butter, and sugar taste good, so why not branch out with rye, coconut oil, and honey? When these moods hit, I can be convinced that chana saag with tofu is a 1:1 stand-in for S&B curry from the box with. Thus, the second rhubarb pie (from an enormous, likely 4lb haul of rhubarb from David) swapped in Petee’s rye crust, which, while delicious, felt decidedly too savory for the tart rhubarb and the remaining pound became a crisp with
After throwing 2lb into the freezer, I used the remaining pound+ (550g or so) to make a rhubarb crisp, with (decidedly on theme no-dairy/no-wheat topping) based on this recipe). I mixed 80g (1 cup) rolled oats, 30g (1/2 cup) almond flour, 60g (1/4 cup) coconut oil, and 60g (1/4 cup) maple syrup, along with a hefty pinch of salt and likely 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric, because I love it with coconut (also, antioxidants because I am in my crunchy phase). With 550g rhubarb stewing beneath alongside 100g (1/2 cup) sugar at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, it was perfect, I thought, but maple a little sweet? Could I go lower on the sugar?
And the answer is probably yes, but don’t go as low as I did. So here, for the next pound of rhubarb purchased from a farm stand on North Fork is what I did, with how I should adjust the next time.
Rhubarb Crisp - with adjustments
Filling
600g rhubarb
100g maple syrup —> up to 150g maple syrup
20g potato starch (~2 tablespoons)
pinch of salt
Topping
80g oats
30g almond flour
60g coconut oil
45g maple syrup (better than 60g before)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (1/4t?)
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
pinch of salt
Combine ingredients for topping with a fork; add rhubarb mixture to baking dish; disperse topping pieces evenly over rhubarb; 45 minutes at 350 degrees
Other things:
Demon Slayer Season 4 is out! Here’s to another series of weeks in which we watch a montage of beautifully animated scenes with no plot (bonus though - the best in animated food)
Billy Eilish’s new song, Chihiro, inspired by Spirited Away, reminded me I am sorely in need of a re-watch.
Yes, the Amy’s Bread pink cake is still the most elite when it comes to cake:frosting ratio, but the cupcake will do when you do not want quite as much of a high.