This month I’ve been baking more than usual. A gluten-free cheesecake for Mother’s Day (my mother and sisters are all on a gluten-free diet), rhubarb (yay! rhubarb!) cupcakes with a meringue topping, apple crumble, and rhubarb crumble. Sadly everything was eaten so quickly that there was no time to take pictures.

The crumbles are pretty easy:

1. cream 1Tbsp butter with 1Tbsp sugar
2. add some rolled oats and flour
3. let the machine stir that for a little
4. does it look crumbly? no? add more flour (intermittently) until it does
5. clean and chop up rhubarb or apple or pear and place in a deep oven-proof dish
6. cover with crumbly butter-mix (add a little more butter on top if you feel decadent)
7. bake in preheated oven at 175°C for about 20 minutes
8. serve warm with ice cream

The cheesecake is a little tricky and takes a while… but it is very creamy and very heavy.
The recipe is from one of my grandmother’s friends, Sadie. This is easy to make gluten-free if you’ve got gluten-free cookies or are willing to make a crust entirely of chopped nuts and butter… which I’m sure is delicious (but I’m allergic to nuts).

1. beat wel 1.5 lbs cream cheese with 1.5 cups of sugar
2. add four eggs and beat well
3. add 1 cup of sour cream (i substituted some mascarpone) and beat well
4. add either vanilla, bay leaves and espresso, or grand manier
5. for the crust crumble 200-250g of cookies (I used gluten-free chocolate chip cookies) and either 1Tbsp flour or chopped nuts (or even just corn starch) and mix with 80g (1 stick) soft butter
6. spread the cookie-butter-mix on the bottom and sides of your spring form
7. wrap the spring form in tin foil on the outside
8. add cheese mix
9. pour water onto a deeper baking pan and set spring form in water
10. bake in preheated oven at 125°C – 150°C for two to three hours
11. turn oven off and leave cake in the oven for about another hour
12. let cool before serving

The rhubarb cupcakes are not very difficult. The yield is ~18 cupcakes.
Of course you can get all fancy with the meringue and use a pastry bag to give it a more attractive form than you might achieve with a simple spoon.

You’ll need: 250g rhubarb, 150g butter, 100g sugar, pinch of salt, 3 eggs, 200g flour, 50g corn starch, 3 tsp baking powder, 4Tbsp milk, 100g confectioner’s sugar

1. preheat oven to 175°C
2. clean, peel and cube rhubarb
3. cream butter with sugar and salt
4. separate the eggs and pour the yolks into the butter-mix
5. combine flour and baking powder and slowly add to the butter mix
6. add the milk to the butter-mix
7. with a spoon or spatula mix in the rhubarb by hand
8. add cupcake paper cups to muffin form and fill each about 2/3 with dough
9. bake for about 20 minutes (less if your making mini-cupcakes)
10. with a clean whisk vigorously beat egg whites until firm, slowly adding confectioner’s sugar towards the end
11. take cupcakes out of oven, spoon a little egg-white onto each one
12. bake for another 10 minutes or until the meringue has a good color.
13. let cool before serving

I promise these all turned out fine the first time I tried them and they are great crowd pleasers, though you might want to reserve the warm crumble for evenings or cooler days.