Upside Down Rhubarb Walnut Cake is a heavenly summer dessert made perfect with a moist cake topped with a sweet and tart crunchy fruit topping.
Happy summer to you! I’ve been rather inconsistent with my posting over the past few months. For those of you on my email list, you already know the reason why – we moved to a 10 acre farm complete with chickens and goats. To say that the new property combined with the big move has taken up a boatload of my time would be an understatement. Alas, I’ve missed my blog and am mentally prepared to be more consistent going forward. Because, after all, fall and winter are just around the corner and what’s more to love about that time of year than all the wonderful food that comes with it, right?
MY OTHER RECIPES
As with all of my recipes, this one comes with a story. I didn’t say my story was that interesting, but nevertheless my recipe creation comes with an origin.
I had a ton of rhubarb in my refrigerator (still do, actually) because I had big plans of making a ton of strawberry rhubarb jam and canning it. The hood strawberries were amazing this year! As with most of my plans lately, I just didn’t get around to it and now the hoods are out of season. No way would I dare making homemade jam with anything other than Oregon Hood Strawberries. So, what could I do with all that rhubarb just hanging out in my frig? I suppose I could make strawberry rhubarb streusel muffins or Strawberry Rhubarb Pie or Strawberry Rhubarb Lemon Bars, but all of those call for strawberries. I decided to basically copy my Upside Down Cranberry Coffee Cake instead, substituting rhubarb for the cranberries, walnuts for the pecans, and omitting all of the holiday spices. Voila! Perfection!
There are a lot of walnuts in this cake, so if you’re not a fan, you could always leave them out. I love walnuts, though, so they remained. There’s a lot of butter and sugar in this cake which is one of the many reasons its so wonderful. It’s not low sugar and its definitely not low fat, but it tastes really good so I call that a win!
If you’ve never cooked with rhubarb, its extremely tart, so the amount of sugar is necessary to balance everything out. The cake isn’t very sweet at all, and as a whole the cake really isn’t that sweet, so it made it even easier for me to eat more than I should have. Enjoy!
- Topping:
- 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 cube) butter
- 2 cups fresh rhubarb, chopped
- 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
- Cake:
- 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Wrap the outside of a 9 inch springform pan with aluminum foil to prevent leaking, because it will leak. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- In a saucepan over medium heat, combine brown sugar and 1/2 cup butter. Bring to a boil, then add rhubarb and walnuts, stir, and pour into bottom of springform pan. Do not overcook the sugar mixture.
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter and 3/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream. Pour batter into prepared pan.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto serving platter and carefully remove pan. Serve warm with whipped cream, if desired.
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