Rhubarb Chocolate Cake / Raparperi-Suklaakakku

I have been craving all kinds of things made with rhubarb the last days/weeks. Which is great because the season has just started. My own rhubarb bush in the garden isn't big enough yet but no matter because there are already Swiss rhubarb available in the shops.

Today I was looking for some ideas in the Swissmilk webpage and found a nice looking recipe for Rhubarb Crumble Brownies. I decided to use the recipe as my "starter" and after some changes came out with a very tasty Rhubarb Chocolate cake.

Rhubarb Chocolate Cake

160 g butter

100 g milk chocolate

170 g eggs (about 3)

200 g sugar

2 g salt

110 g flour

15 g cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

50 g cashew nuts, crushed

30 g almond flakes

For the crumble

90 g flour

50 g fine brown sugar

50 g butter, melted

230 g rhubarb, in cubes

For the dough melt the butter and chocolate and let cool down. Foam the eggs, sugar and salt. Mix together rest of the dry ingredients. Add the flour mixture to the eggs and mix well, but carefully. Add the chocolate-butter mixture and mix carefully.

For the crumble mix all the ingrediets until a crumbly mass is formed.

Place the dough into a cake form. You can use muffin/cupcake forms as well. First, place the rhubab cubes on top of the dough. You can also mix about 1/3 of the cubes with the dough beforehand. Last sprinkle the crumble over the cake. Bake at 180 for about 30 minutes.

 

Aurinkoinen aamupuuro / Sunny morning porridge

A super breakfast

In Finland many people like to eat porridge for breakfast. Normally (read: before or older people still do) you would just cook some oats in the water and add a pinch of salt. Some people eat it with marmelade or with a small spoon of butter, milk and a bit sugar. As a child it wasn't my favourite thing to have but nowadays I'm quite taken to it. I think there are many people with bad porridge experience: clumpy, slimy or just not appetising looking or feeling it the mouth.  

Here in Switzerland porridge isn't very well known. The swiss eat Birchermüesli which, I like to think, is like cold porridge. But recently I have often seen recipes for porridge in the newspaper/magasines. So porridge is pop! Then again in Finland they have discovered the possibility of cold, uncooked "porridge" and there it's a kind of a trendy thing. I actually find all this quite funny.

My favourite kind of a porridge is a warm porridge with loads of berries and some milk. Last week we got some frozen red currants from our granny because she had been organising her freezer and wanted to get rid of them to make some place for the new berries of the coming summer. I'm on holiday this week so I'm eating breakfast at home. When Hubby is working, I often have porridge as a first meal of the day...he isn't so the porridge type. Yesterday I cooked somehing quite nice: Porridge with red currants and mascarpone. It was heavenly to sit outside in the warm spring sun and enjoy this berry treat.

Red currant - Mascarpone Porridge

30 g oats, the fine ones

200 ml water

50 g red currants, frozen

40 g mascarpone

pinch of salt

For the top:

fresh berries like blue berries

dash of maple sirup

Cook the oats and water for some 10 minutes until you have a soft and nice consistancy. Feel free to add some water to have a desired consistancy. When the base is ready, add the frozen berries and bring once more to boil. Remove the pot from the stove and add mascapone and salt. Mix well and the porridge is ready. Serve with fresh berries and you have a sweet tooth and some maple sirup. Also honey would serve nicely.

I have also been doing some gardening  and last week I added two new herbs for my herb garden: Aptenia cordifolia and Kleiner Wiesenknopf. Under the photos you will find links to the Wikipedia to read more about them. 

Aptenia cordifolia / Ficoïde à Feuilles en coeur / Mesiherttalehti

Kleiner Wiesenknopf / Salad burnet / Pikkuluppio

Spring is definitely here!