Goodness, where does the time go? Teaching this summer is really quite exhausting, and I find myself falling back on old standbys for our meals, like build-your-own burritos or the simple pasta sauce recipe I’ve posted about before. I guess this is my way of saying I haven’t been cooking much that’s too interesting lately. Last weekend I didn’t really cook anything at all, including bread, and the weekends are usually my cooking time. What’s worse is that I actually have a back log of pictures, waiting for posts, but I get home at night and am too wiped to do anything but surf the internet. But tonight I’ve found the energy, and hopefully I’ll get those posts out over this weekend, when (mercifully) I don’t have anything really planned.

Those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning may remember my quest for rhubarb earlier this summer. Not having any nearby farmer’s markets, eventually found it at a farmstand after much traveling. A few weeks later, our local produce-heavy grocery store had it in bundles for sale, mocking my effort before. At least I knew the stuff from the farmstand was really fresh. Anyway, given that I love rhubarb, I had to buy some more now that it was convenient, and that meant finding a recipe. I didn’t want to go the standard strawberry-rhubarb route, nor really did I want to make a crumble or a cobbler. I like making sweets that are contained in individual servings, so we can easily transport them and eat them for dessert throughout the week. I thought about ice cream, but then I decided to go muffin. I hadn’t really thought about rhubarb and cinnamon/spices before as going together, but when I found this recipe, I had to try it out.

This is one of those one bowl, how easy can it be recipes. The fat in this is actually vegetable oil, which is supposed to keep the muffins good longer than just butter. Since, like I said before, we eat these throughout the week, things that stay good a while are a plus

In goes the flour; the original recipe called for whole wheat pastry flour, which I didn’t really feel like buying specially for this recipe. While I thought about throwing in some plain whole wheat flour for kicks, I decided to go all-purpose instead.

In goes the rhubarb, cut into chunks. Though they’re as crisp as celery when they go in, they soften up completely and nearly lose all structure when baked in the muffins.

That’s it as far as the batter goes: simple as that.

Evenly divided into twelve muffin cups, the batter filled them pretty much to the brim. It’s a little fuller than I would normally fill them, but the muffins puffed up without overflowing too much.

I substituted almonds for walnuts in the cinnamon sugar topping that gets sprinkled on top. In the future, I think I might press the nuts down into the batter a bit to keep them from falling off. As it was, they pretty easily rolled off the baked muffins.

Perfect. The muffins were tender and very moist, helped both by the rhubarb and the oil in the batter. They would make great breakfast muffins, but they were delicious for dessert after dinner as well. Like I mentioned before, the rhubarb hunks lost all their structure and became little bursts of tart rhubarb in between the sweet, spiced muffin batter.

Cinnamon Rhubarb Muffins (adapted from Eggs on Sunday)

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup almonds, chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF and line a muffin pan with muffin cups.
2. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour through nutmeg) and whisk to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (eggs through vanilla)
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently fold to combine. Do not overmix. Fold in the rhubarb, and divide among prepared muffin cups.
5. In a small bowl, toss the almonds, cinnamon and sugar together with your fingers or a spoon. Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins and press nuts lightly into the batter.
6. Bake for about 18-22 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of one comes out clean. The tops should spring back to the touch when they’re cooked through.

I love rhubarb. Unfortunately, for whatever reason it is ridiculously hard to find where I live. It’s not in the grocery stores, the most of the farmstands either aren’t open or don’t carry more specialty foods like it, and we don’t have the farmer’s markets that provide a wide variety that you find in the city. But last Saturday we went driving and actually found a farmstand that was selling rhubarb, much to my delight. I’ve had this recipe, which is courtesy of The Rustic Kitchen, for several years now, but I never had the opportunity to make it. It seems to be a variant of this recipe, though the copy I have was handed out at the original Green City Market demonstration and includes ginger in the shortcakes, not the compote. It was definitely worth the wait!

All the dry ingredients get combined in a large bowl and whisked together.

Add the cold butter and shortening to the dry ingredients. Someone once impressed upon me the need for keeping this all cold and cutting the butter quickly without mashing and warming. A lot of recipes say to cut with two knives or something similar, but I find it almost impossible to do well without a pastry cutter.

If the butter is getting to warm (like what happened to me in my very warm kitchen), put it into the refrigerator for 10 minutes or so to cool it down. What you want is a texture something like cornmeal, with no substantial hunks of butter.

After the butter is worked in, the ginger chips get mixed in. I had some ginger nibs that I bought at the Spice House in Chicago the last time I was there, but I had mixed them in with some cacao nibs I also bought there. I didn’t feel like picking them out, or adding cacao to the recipe, so I decided to cut up some ginger chew candy into small hunks. The original recipe called for a half a cup of of chips, but I got tired of cutting and was concerned about the density of ginger chips in the final shortcakes, so I ended up using about a quarter of a cup instead.

The wet ingredients get mixed in until it forms a fairly stiff dough, which is turned out onto a lightly floured surface.

This is patted into a circle and wrapped in plastic wrap, then refrigerated for an hour or overnight. I was making these for breakfast the following morning, so overnight it was!

Also made the night before was the rhubarb compote that would go with the shortcakes.

Before you cook it, rhubarb doesn’t have much going for it besides it’s bright magenta color. It certainly doesn’t smell tasty.

The rhubarb goes into a saucepan with a lot of sugar and a little water and salt. And that’s basically it: it’s super simple. Stir every once in a while and let the rhubarb cook down to a thick, pink, pulpy compote.

Into the refrigerator it goes. In my case, overnight, but if you’re making it same day, refrigerate until cold to let the compote thicken.

The next morning, the shortcake dough was rolled out to 3/4″ thick and cut into 2″ rounds. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures pre-baking (most likely due to it being pre-breakfast).

The ginger chips, made out of the candy, melted during baking like chocolate chips in a cookie. They integrated into the dough a bit more and were gingery without being too strong.

The shortcakes are split in half like biscuits and a healthy dollop of the rhubarb compote is added. The shortcakes themselves had a great consistency, light with a crisp outside. And the compote was fantastic in it’s simplicity, sweet and tart at the same time. It would be great on any kind of toast, but with the ginger shortcakes it was a winning combination.

Rhubarb Compote with Ginger Shortcakes (courtesy of The Rustic Kitchen)

Ingredients

Ginger Shortcakes

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small chunks
• 4 tablespoons vegetable shortening, chilled and cut into small chunks
• 1/2 cup ginger chips
• 2/3 cup buttermilk or half-and-half

Rhubarb Compote

• 6 cups 1-inch pieces rhubarb (about two pounds)
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup water

Directions

Ginger Shortcakes

1. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add butter and shortening and cut together with a pastry cutter until the the dough resembles a coarse meal.
3. Stir in ginger chips. Then add buttermilk and stir until dough forms a ball.
4. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and pat into a round. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour, or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400ºF and take dough out of the refrigerator to rest for about 10 minutes.
6. Cut 12 2″ biscuits and place on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Rhubarb Compote

1. Stir together rhubarb with sugar, salt and water in large saucepan over medium high heat.
2. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, until all the sugar dissolves.
3. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until rhubarb becomes soft, about 20 minutes.
4. Refrigerate until cold to thicken compote. Reheat before serving if desired.