The gnosis of sticky rhubarb cake

I was considering writing a short – fully illustrated – piece on the wonder that is sticky rhubarb cake. But, as if often the case with these ideas, hunger intervened and the cake is reduced to scrapings. Showing you good folk a few crumbs left on a plate would be unnecessarily cruel, I fear. So you will have to imagine the glories of that cake – the crisp stickiness of its topping, the sharpness of the rhubarb and the soft sweetness of the sponge. That such mundane ingredients – sugar, flour, eggs, rhubarb – transform into such joy is one of life’s deep magical truths. I wonder – perhaps you do to – how we stumbled on the combination, on the idea of turning sweet sticky goo into soft, luxurious cake.

Was there some recalcitrant god or goddess of cake who Prometheus-like swept down from the heavens to reveal the truth of baking to a bemused and awestruck cavewoman? Or was The Book of Cake inscribed on golden tablets – now sadly lost to us – but fortunately transcribed and passed down through the generations? Maybe cake is a temptation of the devil whispered in the ear of that cavewoman – an artifice to drag us from the true path of sacrifice and salvation? Or a reward from the faeries!

Whatever the occult truth of baking, we can be pleased that we have its wonders around us (albeit for a very short time as connoisseurs of summer fete cake stalls will know) and that a vast collective of cake-makers has taken to the ether to spread the word. Indeed, there are times when it seems every single American food-blogger is presenting luscious cakes, buns and muffins – perhaps it is this epidemic of home baking that accounts for Yankee waistlines rather than the ubiquity of burger and chips.

So, dearly beloved reader, have faith in that rhubarb cake – it was real, it looked fantastic and…

…you can imagine how it tasted!

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