Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

I'm always looking for new desserts using rhubarb, so when I saw this delicious looking Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake on a the Blue Ridge Baker blog recently I had to try it.  I followed the link back to Martha Stewart's site and saw that she used sour cream rather than buttermilk, and had a useful video showing how to cut and arrange the rhubarb.

I followed the recipe exactly, except I used demerara sugar in the crumble topping. Here are the metric weights of ingredients that I used: Topping - 55g butter; 70g plain flour; 50g demerara sugar.  Fruit - 450g rhubarb and 150g caster sugar, plus 50g butter for the tin. Cake batter - 115g butter; 200g caster sugar; 200g plain flour; 2 large eggs; zest of half a large orange and 1 tablespoon juice; 11/2 teaspoons baking powder; 250mls sour cream.

My cake tin was slightly smaller (24cm rather than 25cm in diameter) so the cake took a few minutes longer to cook. The batter was quite thin, which made me worry that the crumble topping would sink, but that fear proved unfounded. The cake rose quite high during cooking but sank back as it started to cool. The cake felt as if it was floating on a puddle of fruit juice, so I was quite worried about turning it out onto a wire rack rather than a plate, but all was well - there were only a few dribbles of pretty pink sugary juices which dripped down the sides of the cake.

The cake batter cooked to a soft and moist, but quite dense texture - not at all sponge-like, but almost like a cooked batter. Knowing how much juice can come out of rhubarb, I think it must have absorbed a lot of liquid during cooking. The crumble topping, which ends up on the base, provided a good contrast in texture. The rhubarb topping was very tasty  - just the correct amount of sweetness, and the extra butter made it very tender.

This is going to be added to my list of regularly appearing rhubarb desserts. You can't beat a crumble for speed, but on warmer days and for special occasions it's worth putting in the extra effort required for this cake.