Rhubarb Upside Down Cake with Roast Apple and Whipped Ricotta

Words by Rupert Cooper

A seasonal menu to celebrate spring, designed for the Porthleven Food Festival by Chef Rupert Cooper of Philleigh Way Cookery School and Cove Café.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

For The Cake:

Bunch of rhubarb (8 stems)

250g butter

250g sugar

250g self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp mixed spice

6 balls stem ginger (blitzed into a paste)

1 small tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsp any dark spirit (rum, cognac, whisky etc)

For the apples:

2 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped into wedges

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp butter

For the whipped ricotta:

150g Ricotta

3 tbsp sugar

Small tsp vanilla

Orange zest (optional)

Method

For the apples, melt the butter in a pan then add the sugar and stir to dissolve.

Add the apple wedges and fry until golden.

To make the cream, whip the ingredients together in a bowl until light and creamy. Taste and adjust if necessary.

For the cake, in a loaf tin or loose bottom cake tin, grease and line with baking paper. Then cut the rhubarb into different shapes and sizes, lay onto a baking tray and sprinkle with sugar. Roast at 180°c for 10 minutes.

Beat the butter and sugars together until light and creamy, then add in the eggs and vanilla and beat further. Then sieve in the flour and baking powder and fold in until it’s all combined. Add the spices, orange zest, rum and ginger paste.

Take out the roasted rhubarb.

In the lined cake tin, place the rhubarb in a pattern of your choice in the bottom of the tin. Then put the rest of the ginger pieces all over the arranged rhubarb pieces, keeping the lovely rhubarb juices.

Pour the cake batter over the rhubarb, and spread to the edges with a spatula. Bake the cake for 30-40 minutes. Check with a skewer to see if it is cooked, it should come out clean. If it doesn’t, bake for another couple of minutes until it is cooked through.

Flip out the cake onto a cooling rack, drizzle over some of the lovely rhubarb juices and once fully cooled put on a cake stand. Serve with the ricotta and apples.