<img src="https://i0.wp.com/foodfortheages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/IMG_2103-2-scaled.jpg" alt="Rhubarb Pie a la Joy

” />This is a smaller version of this recipe I. I originally learned this favorite recipe, Rhubarb Pie a la

Joy

, from The Joy of Cooking cookbook my father gave me when I was newly married in 1988. Dad was a good weekend cook and knew this classic cookbook was just what he needed. The Joy of Cooking was first published in 1936 and has stood the test of time with timeless family-style cooking recipes. Few foods are more native to the American palate than a classic fruitcake. And this is one of them. One of the best cake recipes in the book is Rhubarb Pie a la Joy. It’s incredibly spicy and complemented by the homemade crust of Food for the Ages.

Rhubarb is a vegetable, and although you can eat its stems, its leafy greens are actually poisonous! Once the large umbrella-shaped leaves are removed, the sturdy crimson stems are washed, cut into small pieces, covered with sugar, a little orange peel, a little flour and a little butter and cooked to perfection. This cake pairs beautifully with a boiled cream or, like most fruit cakes, with vanilla ice cream.

Rhubarb in your garden: the gift that keeps giving!

Since it is one of the first plants to appear in the spring and grows almost anywhere (unlike most true fruits that favor warmer weather and lower altitudes), rhubarb is always the first cake I bake after a long, cold winter. And if you have a rhubarb plant in the garden, you can keep growing stems and baking cakes all summer, as long as you remove its seed head from time to time. Summer stems may be harder but still usable!

Here is my video of making the filling and spreading the crust

:

Rhubarb cake a la Joy Total

time

: 1.5 hours, including cooking time. Serve 8

ingredients 6 cups

• young rhubarb stalks, unpeeled and diced

1/2

• cup flour

2

• cups

sugar 1 1/2 tablespoons butter 1

• 1/2 teaspoons orange peel 2 tablespoons
• milk for the rind
• Foamy sugar to sprinkle on top

How to

use

1. Preheat oven to 450⁰F. Combine all filling ingredients in a large bowl and set aside. Make a cake dough. Here is FFA’s recipe for the cake crust.
2. Select a large plate for deep dish cakes. After resting the cake dough for at least half an hour, spread the cake crust and place it on the bottom of the cake plate.
3. Pour the rhubarb mixture into a large bowl of deep cake and sprinkle with pero ter

. Spread the top

4. crust and place it on top of the cake. (You can make this cake with a lattice crust to make it look even cuter.) Fold the top edge of the bark under the bottom bark and pinch as desired. Make a slit in the center of the upper crust to release steam.

Paint the top of the

5. crust with milk, then sprinkle some sugar on top of the cake and then place it in a preheated oven on the center rack. Let cook for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350°F and cook another 40 minutes. Make sure the center is bubbling before taking it out of the oven and let cool 10 minutes before serving with vanilla ice cream.

Sarah Patton, friend and baker of Baking Bedlamite, tried the Rhubarb Pie-A la Joy recipe using her green rhubarb plant growing in her backyard in Geneva, Switzerland.