Baking used to be that one are of my life where I carefully followed instructions – unlike cooking in general, where you can often improvise pretty freely, baking requires precision. So unless you know exactly what you’re doing, sticking to the recipe is a good idea. But as my confidence grew, I started to experiment – substituting one flour here, adding another flavour there – and finally last week, created the very first recipe of my own.

This happened because I had some rhubarb stalks and I wanted to make a cake that included them and sour cream. As a good Estonian, I’m very fond of sour cream. And rhubarb, for that matter. But all the recipes I could find had two layers to the cake: the bottom and the filling and this was not what I wanted. I wanted a very moist and relatively light cake with sour cream batter below and rhubarb on top. I also wanted it to be easy to make and not to require any electric appliances. This is also why I use cups, as it makes measuring very easy. So I did some research and lots of thinking and came up with my own rhubarb cake.

Ingredients

Batter:
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I use the darkest I can find, as it adds flavour)
1 egg
1 cup sour cream (I’ve used both 15% and 20%. Edit: it has been brought to my attention that the cake on the picture was in fact made with 38% sour cream, I misread the label.)
1 teaspoon real vanilla paste
1 cup non-bleached wheat flour
1 cup almond flour (I use ready-made)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
Topping:
2 long rhubarb stalks, peeled and chopped (if you are lucky to have some nice young rhubarb, use more stalks and skip the peeling)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Melt the butter gently on low heat and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, mix the flours, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder in a bowl. Take a larger bowl and mix the butter and sugar. Add the egg, mix vigorously for a while, then add the sour cream and mix some more. Add the flour mixture and, you guessed it – mix. Scrape the batter into a standard springform cake tin (lined with baking paper) and scatter rhubarb pieces, sugar and cinnamon on top. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 35 minutes or so.

The only fault I can find with this cake is that it doesn’t look like much – when you make it with light sugar it’s prettier, but not as good. It’s also very soft, so it might be somewhat difficult to cut and move neatly (although if you cool it slightly first, it shouldn’t be an issue), so it’s possibly better suited for relaxed entertaining than serving people who are overly concerned with presentation and form. But we wouldn’t want to waste that cake on that kind of people anyway, would we?

As a side note, rhubarb isn’t just wonderful to eat, it’s a lovely, springy note in perfume too. My favourite take is the Aedes de Venustas signature perfume that combines rhubarb with vetiver and comes in an absolutely stunning bottle. I also like Olfactive Studio’s Flash Back (rhubarb and citrus) and Hermes Eau de Rhubarbe Ecalarte is nice too. The latter is probably the easiest to find and I have the shower gel version on my spring ‘to-buy’ list.