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Rhubarb Tutti-Frutti Shortcake
2 cups stewed rhubarb 1/2 cup dates pitted 1/2 cup raisins 1 cup cream, whipped Make a short cake by any preferred recipe, split and butter it quickly, and spread at once with a filling made as follows: Cook together for 5 minutes the stewed rhubarb, dates, and raisins, chopped fine. Spread over each layer while both cake and filling are hot and put a thin layer of whipped cream on top of the layer of fruit before covering with the top layer of the short cake. This dessert should be served at once with whipped cream or with thick, sweet cream and sugar. Serves 6.
A spring shortcake that leans on dried fruit to sweeten and thicken tart rhubarb. The recipe assumes you already have a shortcake recipe and a pan of stewed rhubarb on hand.
- Assemble hot, serve immediatelyThe instruction to spread hot filling on hot buttered cake is the whole point: the butter melts into the crumb and the juice soaks in without turning it to paste. The recipe twice insists on speed, and a shortcake left standing will soften.
- What kind of shortcakeIn a book of this period "short cake" usually means a sweetened baking-powder biscuit dough baked in two round layers rather than a sponge, though the recipe leaves the choice to you and gives no baking directions; follow the timing in whichever shortcake recipe you use, and aim for a layer dry enough to absorb the filling.
- Stewed rhubarbThe quantity is the cooked yield, not raw. Roughly 1 1/2 lb trimmed rhubarb, cut in inch pieces and stewed down with sugar, gives about 2 cups.
- Sugar is not specifiedThe recipe gives no sweetening for the filling, on the assumption the rhubarb was already stewed with sugar. Taste the filling before it goes on the cake; dates and raisins add a good deal, but unsweetened rhubarb will be sharp.
- Chop the dried fruit before cookingThe five-minute simmer is only long enough to soften finely chopped dates and raisins and let them absorb the rhubarb juice, which is what thickens the filling. Whole or coarsely cut fruit will stay chewy and the filling will run.
- Rhubarb leavesUse only the stalks. The leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are never eaten.
- Cream1 cup cream whips to about 2 cups. That covers the thin layer inside plus a modest amount at table; double it if you want the generous serving the last line suggests.
- YieldThe recipe gives six servings from a two-layer shortcake; no pan size is specified.