Rhubarb Muffins

Rhubarb is one of those vegetables that can be tricky to work with, but is really rewarding. After our current supply had been all but used up, we decided to use the last remnants to make some muffins. Muffins are awesome.

Ingredients 

For our muffins we needed a cup and a half of flour, half a teaspoon each of baking soda and salt, three-quarters cup of brown sugar, half a cup of buttermilk — or use sour milk, or milk mixed with a half-tablespoon of lemon juice — three-quarters cup of vegetable oil, an egg, a teaspoon of vanilla, and half a cup of chopped nuts.

To this we added the last of our rhubarb, one cup's worth chopped.

Topping

We're going to use a topping made from a quarter cup each of brown sugar, chopped nuts, and oats, and a half-teaspoon of cinnamon.

Cookin'

After preheating the oven to 325 and greasing up the muffin pan (we use a 6 large pan, but a 12 small works too), we combined the flour, soda, and salt, then added brown sugar, buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla. This was mixed together until it was moist, and then we stirred in the rhubarb and nuts.

The batter was scooped into the tray, and then sprinkled with the topping we prepared earlier. After about half-an-hour our muffins were done.

Diagnosis: Delicious

The muffins came out moist and sweet, with just a bit of tang from the rhubarb. Definitely a recipe worth keeping around and making again the next time we get our hands on some rhubarb.

Rhubarb Sauce

Can you believe that until last year, I'd never even tasted rhubarb? I was only vaguely aware of the vegetable's existence at all. It was just another quaint sounding food with a funny name, like arugula or rutabagas. When I found out that my parents had some in their garden, I took it upon myself to give a new food a try.

The stalks were harvested from the garden, and the toxic leaves stripped from them. I took five long stalks without any clear idea of what we'd do with them right away, and I wanted to have enough to experiment with. Kat had a recipe for a rhubarb sauce, and we had some ice cream in the freezer, so our course was clear.

Process

Chopping up two stalks to give us the two-and-a-half cups the sauce called for is virtually all the prep work the sauce requires.  We added to this 1/3 cup of pure organic maple syrup purchased from McCluskey Brothers farms, and a quarter-cup of lemon juice.

The mixture was simmered low and slow until the rhubarb was soft, then mashed into a sauce. We spot-checked it for sweetness, adding more syrup as desired. After it was done, we spooned it over vanilla ice cream.

Outcome

Rhubarb has an interesting taste, sweet with a hint of tart. The sauce we created would have gone just as well over pound cake or basically anything else you want to drizzle it over.