This month’s BBC Good Food magazine has a recipe for Rhubarb & Custard Blondies — yay a way to use up all that rhubarb in the freezer!

200g of rhubarb. That still leaves kilos of rhubarb in the freezer. How do you use up rhubarb properly unless it’s in a crumble!?

Well I’m still making it. Cake is cake.

Soph was making cake before me today… and it did not go well. Turns out our oven is old and the temperature is not what it says on the dial. Or would say on the dial if all the numbers hadn’t worn off from cleaning years ago… So I’m benefiting from her misfortune, and stuck the oven thermometer in to actuall find where 160c fan is (at about 180c apparently).

So onto the cake mix. I assume it’s cream sugar and butter, fold in… erm… what? You want me to have 17 pans of melting butters, making instant custard, making rhubarb jam!?

OK well that was unexpected.

So melted butter/sugar mix gets folded into flour and custard powder, to give a batter, which I guess makes sense for a blondie (it’s not a cake). Then mix in white chocolate pieces and vanilla for the base.

Then wait for the “instant” custard. What a con. Have to add sugar and milk. So basically it’s dried egg and cornstarch. And I still have to boil milk, tranfer to bowl, back on heat, boil and stir stir stir for bloody ages, and it still ends up being lumpy and leaving a crust on the bottom of the pan (ok, ok… the custard powder was out of date and I didn’t stir all the time, I took breaks to do other bits of cake). Seriously it would be easier to make real custard, and it would be nicer, smoother, thicker, and less washing up!

Anyhoo… lumpy custard and rhubarb goes on top and gets swirled with a stick.

Bake at actual 160c fan (unlike poor Soph’s cakes…) and ta-da!

Then melt some white chocolate in the microwave and drizzle over the top.

Well…

Turns out Green & Black’s white chocolate is not for melting. It went soft… then just ended up burning. And yes – I did it in short 30s bursts, stirring and waiting in between each blast. So no chocolate drizzle :(

So this better taste good. £8 of white chocolate, half of which burnt. Three pans, five bowls, three spoons, two spatulas, and more to wash up…

And seriously that custard pan is going to be soaking until at least Tuesday before I even think about trying to wash it up!

Update! Worth it. We each tried “one” piece.