With the whole family coming for dinner, I figured it was a good time to dip into the sweet pastry section, which scares me and always takes a long time, but I was struck by this tart. Rhubarb is not something I am familiar with, though I feel I should be. I have only cooked it once in my life. I set about making the pastry, with ground almonds and rosemary – interesting ingredients. As I was whizzing the ingredients to bind them together, my nephew arrived, so I had to contend with his chatter as I baked. But it was funny, he was so helpful, offering to take photos, fascinated by baking and talking about the time he made meringues and macaroons. 
He’s 9 years old. I offered him my meringue recipe from this book, The 32nd Bake: Snowball Meringues, the one with the cream and grated white chocolate!!!! Mmmmmm. It’s surprising and so great to hear kids taking an interest in baking. I love it.
I went to Scarecrow the other day, an amazing cafe on 33 Victoria St East just below Albert Park. They have divine cakes and slices including a Rhubarb & Fangipane Tart as well as an amazing selection of beautiful products to buy, from Fine & Dandy Green Tea with Rose Petals, to Orange & Ylangylang Swirl Blue Earth Soap. Check it out. 🙂 http://www.scarecrow.co.nz Onto the bake, I put the pastry in the fridge to chill, then made the rhubarb puree by chopping the rhubarb,
(lucky for me it is in season) into 2 cm pieces and putting this into a pot with a splash of water, sugar and cinnamon sticks 
to boil for 10 minutes. 
I decided to multitask, by marinating the chicken at the same time while the rhubarb cooked, (soy sauce, grated root ginger, honey, garlic and a touch of maple syrup), but I failed to read the recipe properly which actually said bring the rhubarb to the boil, then simmer gently, stirring now and then, for 10 minutes,
( I just saw the word “boil”). 
So it did catch and burn on the bottom but lucky for me I salvaged most of it. Phew! I didn’t have a backup plan. I put it in a piping bag as instructed!
After rolling out the pastry, lining a flan tin and blind baking, I made the custard. I whipped the eggs with 
sugar and then I added the boiled milk, got that one right this time. 
I poured the custard into a jug, then over the pastry case into which I had already piped a thick swirl of rhubarb puree over the base.
After setting this on the baking tray, I filled it up with more custard and added the top swirl of rhubarb. 
It did look very pretty, though I ran out of rhubarb before my swirl was complete, it was stuck to the bottom of the pan. 🙁
The tart was very well received, light and fluffy with that yummy taste of Rhubarb. I had left over custard, so made little tarts the next day with some left over pastry and bought flaky 
pastry. Nice to use up all the left over ingredients 🙂
More cake in the house! 🙂
