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!
