Delicious seasonal rhubarb and custard cake

It's the time for rhubarb. Now this is a vegetable that divides like few others. Some, like me, love it, some (like you?) hate it and then there are whole nations totally unaware of it. I used to work in a very international environment and remember a good colleague and friend from Argentina asking what this rhubarb thing was.

So, for lovers of this versatile vegetable, we in Europe interestingly enough treat more like fruit, here a little cake recipe, which tastes absolutely fabulous in my humble opinion.

For a 26cm diameter round cake tin you need:

Base:

• 125g soft unsalted butter

• 125g castor sugar

• 2 large eggs

• 150g self-raising plain flour

• pinch of salt

• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Custard:

• 200ml milk

• 50ml double cream

• 1 sachet of custard powder

• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Crumble:

• 80g cold unsalted butter

• 70g demerara sugar

• 80g plain flour

• 40g ground almonds

Also:

• 750g Rhubarb

• 3 tbsp granulated sugar

• 2tbsp flaked almonds

First clean the rhubarb and cut into small pieces, mix with the 3 tbsp of sugar and leave to rest while you are making the dough.

Mix all the crumble ingredients in a food mixer so that the consistency matches your personal preference. Keep aside for later.

Grease your baking tin with butter and pre-heat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.

Now for the base, cream the soft butter, sugar, salt, vanilla essence and 2 eggs till the mass is a smooth creamy white. Then add the flour and briefly mix till combined. Evenly spread in the cake tin.

Heat the milk with the cream and make your custard according to the package instructions. Once ready, leave to cool down a little and spread on top of the base.

Drain the sugared rhubarb well and scatter over the custard.

Top the cake with the prepared crumbles, scatter the flaked almonds over the crumble and bake now for 45-60 minutes (depending on your oven (till set and golden brown).

Leave to cool down entirely before taking it out of the tin.

This is a scrumptious combination of a rhubarb cake and a custard crumble, which I'm sure will please most rhubarb lovers. Enjoy!