Rhubarb and Custard Roulade

For the first time ever, I have forced some rhubarb!!  I have always wanted to do it and although I haven’t got an official ‘rhubarb forcing pot’, I used one of my old terracotta tomato pots and it worked a treat.  In all honesty, I’d actually forgotten about it.  It was only whilst I was doing a bit of weeding in the garden that I noticed this pot at a funny angle in the rhubarb.  The rhubarb had reached the top of the pot and was pushing it off.  It was quite exciting lifting the pot off, rather like opening a special present, to find this lovely pink rhubarb underneath and boy was it sweet to taste and not at all stringy!

It was time to make something with the rhubarb.  I didn’t want to make the usual rhubarb crumble, so decided upon a roulade (as I do enjoy making swiss rolls) and this certainly didn’t disappoint.  I’ve already been asked to make it again!

I’m linking this to the Great British Rhubarb Recipe Round-Up over at Lavender and Lovage and Farmersgirl Kitchen – all for the love of rhubarb.

Ingredients

For the sponge:-

• 3 large eggs
• 75g caster sugar
• 75g self-raising flour

For the filling:-

• 250g rhubarb
• 20g caster sugar
• 200g fresh custard (thick)
• 200g double cream
• icing sugar to dust
• Vanilla Beans/Stem Ginger (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line a swiss roll tin (or shallow tin if you don’t have one).
2. Cut the rhubarb into 2-3cm pieces and place in an ovenproof dish.  Sprinkle over the sugar and place in the oven for 20 minutes until soft.  Leave to cool.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar until they are pale and fluffy and have trebled in size.
4. Gently fold in the flour.
5. Pour into the swiss roll tin and spread to the edges.
6. Bake in the oven for 8 minutes until lightly golden and springy to the touch.
7. Place a sheet of greaseproof paper on your work surface and sprinkle with icing sugar.  Once the cake comes out of the oven, turn the sponge out onto it and roll it up lightly within the paper and allow to cool.
8. Whilst the cake is cooling whisk the cream until it forms stiff peaks.  Fold in the custard.  If it’s a warm day you may have to chill the custard cream for a while to allow it to ‘thicken up’ again.  I used my new whisk sent to me by It’s A Baking Thing (a lovely website with lots of baking goodies).  I must admit this whisk made light work of whisking the cream up!  At this stage if you want to add some vanilla beans or finely chopped stem ginger (or just the syrup) to the custard cream, then now’s the time to do so.
9. Drain the juice from the rhubarb and pat dry with kitchen paper.
10. Unroll the swiss roll and place the rhubarb over the surface.  It will be quite squishy so tear it up so the whole surface has been covered.
11. Spoon over the custard cream and spread out gently.  Don’t put too much in as it will all ooze out the end when you roll it up!  If in doubt, keep some back in a jug to spoon over when the roulade is cut.
12. Roll the roulade up tightly and place in the fridge to allow to chill before serving.
13. Before serving sprinkle the top of the roulade liberally with icing sugar.

I did put a little too much filling in my roulade and it was rather squishy when I rolled it up and didn’t really stay in a ‘roll’, although once chilled it did firm up a bit and tasted delicious.