Rhubarb & Soured Cream Cake, with Ginger Syrup

What an enticing prospect a Rhubarb cake is.  I found a recipe on a card from Waitrose, for a Rhubard and Soured Cream Cake, with a ginger syrup.

The photo on the card looked very nice and reading the recipe made me want to try it.  My sister had frozen some rhubarb, from her garden, so I was able to use some of that.  In thawing it out a lot of moisture came out, so I used that instead of cold water when making the ginger syrup, just in case the flavour of the rhubarb had diminished through the loss of moisture.  Though the aroma from the oven as it baked certainly didn’t make me think that this would be the case.  Once the syrup was made and spooned over the cake it really looked great and smelled deliciously spicy.

As for the recipe it is easy to follow and doesn’t have too many ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 75g butter, softened
• 250g soft brown sugar
• 284ml soured cream
• 2 medium eggs
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• 300g self raising flour
• 400g rhubarb chopped into one inch pieces(roughly)
• 100g caster sugar

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c Fan/350F.  Grease a 23cm springform cake tin(9 inches), and line the base with parchment paper.
2. Cream the butter with the soft brown sugar
3. Add a little soured cream and mix until smooth
4. Add the remaining soured cream, eggs and 2 teaspoons of ground ginger and beat until combined.
5. Gently fold in the flour until combined and spoon the mixture into the cake tin.
6. Top the batter with the chopped rhubarb, either randomly or in a pattern.
7. Bake for 1.5 hours, or until the cake is firm to the touch.  If the top begins to brown too quickly cover it with tin foil for the last 30 minutes.
8. Once baked leave the cake in the in to cool for ten minutes.  Then turn it out, removing the parchment paper and allow to cook on a wire rack.
9. When the cake is cooled place it on a presentation plate, ready for the syrup.
10. In a saucepan put 100g caster sugar, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger and 100 ml of cold water(I used liquid released from the frozen rhubarb).
11. Heat until the sugar has dissolved.
12. Increase the heat and allow to boil for about 5 minutes to create a nice syrup.
13. Spoon the syrup over the top of the cake and allow it to be absorbed.
14. Cut the cake into wedges to serve.