I haven’t had the time to write up recipes from Christmas, but I figured I should at least post some photos of all my bakes, so here we go…
Tag: rhubarb
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Christmas Bake Photo Dump
Panettone Slice Straight Challah Rhubarb-Strawberry Tart Rhubarb-Strawberry Tart Panettone Panettone Snowballs / Mexican Wedding Cookies Lunabread Cookies Aged Fruitcake Aged Fruitcake Cookie Tower Cookie Platter Round Challah Round Challah Sliced -
Strawberry Rhubarb Tart
It’s Strawberry Rhubarb Tart season! Our yearly CSA began last week, and one of the first things we always get is rhubarb and strawberries. Two years ago I made individual tartlets, this year I decided to make a single full-sized tart. As I noted, the tartlets were called “maybe the best thing you’ve made” by my family, so the bar was pretty high. That’s also partly why I decided to do something a little different. I loosely followed this recipe from Bakes by Brown Sugar.
The Filling
Compote For a change, I remembered to take an in-progress photo. Above is a picture of the compote I made to start the whole process. Although not strictly required, I peeled the rhubarb to ensure it would become nice and soft/smooth when pureed. After breaking down the compote, I used a stick blender to make it into a puree. This puree then gets thickened with eggs to become the tart filling. A tart like this is always scary because you can never be quite sure if/when it has set. Even when you take it out of the oven it seems somewhat liquidy, but you need faith that as it cools it will set if you’ve done it right. Thankfully, I had.
Tart Slice The Final Result
The tart was a great success, everyone loved it. Was it better than the tartlets I made previously? Who knows, but it doesn’t matter. The brown sugar crust was a nice change from the less sweet one I used in the past. It helped counteract the tartness of the rhubarb that comes through and I would definitely use the crust again. The one thing I regret is that I was in a rush and used premade canned whipped cream instead of making it fresh. I think fresh whipped cream would have, to steal a phrase, kicked the strawberry rhubarb tart up a notch.
Whole Tart -
Strawberry Rhubarb Cheesecake
Strawberry rhubarb cheesecake for Father’s Day! My in-laws, and especially my father-in-law, are big fans of cheesecake, so it was the natural choice for Father’s Day. The big question was the flavor. That ended up being a no-brainer as well. The week of father’s day we got both rhubarb and strawberries in our CSA share, so I knew I had to use them. Rather than try to get super fancy and flavor the actual cheesecake, I decided to go more traditional and put a layer of compote on top.
I made (way more than I needed) compote following this recipe from Laylita’s Recipes. It’s basically equal parts strawberries and rhubarb, with some sugar and water and a bit of lemon juice, that you cook down for a while. I ended up adding a small amount of cornstarch because it wasn’t getting as thick as I wanted naturally. I wanted to make sure it would stand as a layer on top of the cheesecake and not make a runny mess. I want strawberry rhubarb cheesecake, not strawberry rhubarb soup.
With the compote ready I moved on to the cheesecake. I have tried all of, no-bake, water bath, and just plain baked before, and I like just plain baked the best. I’m sure you can make great cheesecake all these ways, but I’ve had bad luck with the others.
My go-to recipe (after my previous mixed results) is Sugar Spun Run’s “The Best Cheesecake Recipe”. So far at least in my experience, it really is the best cheesecake recipe.
Ta-da! Putting it Together
To put it all together I made some fresh whipped cream and piped a border. I then poured in some compote and spread it out. Between the whipped cream border and the thickness of the compote, I had zero running issues. To top it off I made a (barely artistic) center flourish with some more whipped cream and slices of strawberry.
A View After Cutting 
A Slice Ready To Eat -
Strawberry Rhubarb Tartlets
Strawberry Rhubarb Tartlets for the 4th of July. Let me start with a mea culpa – I don’t really have a recipe for this because it just sort of developed. It’s a crying shame because this was crowned “probably the best thing you’ve made” by my family.
Strawbery Rhubarb Tartlets Tartlets. Tartlets. Tartlets. The word has lost all meaning.
The Non Recipe
We subscribe to a weekly CSA from local farm that we love. One of the earliest treats every season is rhubarb. My wife decided to make rhubarb compote with the intention to eat it on yogurt for breakfast. It turned out to be WAY more than she needed, so I received the directive to ‘make something with all this compote’.
I decided on Strawberry Rhubarb Tartlets. I vaguely followed this recipe from Baking The Goods, but of course, that recipe starts from scratch, not from having a bunch of compote. I had to improvise a bit, but I mixed compote with sugar and egg yolk over some heat until I got a good consistency (and taste). After that I pretty much followed their Strawberry Rhubarb Tartlets recipe.
Strawbery Rhubarb Tartlets I decided to make some fresh whipped cream to pipe onto the Strawberry Rhubarb Tartlets prior to serving. Since I wanted it to be thicker for piping I followed this recipe for stabilized whipped cream. It’s basically a standard whipped cream recipe with some milk powder added to stiffen it. Other recipes use cream of tartar or gelatin to thicken, but I had milk powder and that seemed like the most flavor neutral option to me, so I went with it.
Success
Well, as I spoilered up front – it came out great! The shortcrust was buttery and crumbly (like in my pecan pie), the filling was delicious, and fresh whipped cream on top was the perfect finish. These were enjoyed at my family’s 4th of July BBQ, and everyone loved them. The next time I have some rhubarb I’ll have to try and recreate, this time with an actual full recipe.
Strawbery Rhubarb Tartlets