Rhubarb Cinnamon Sugar Coffee Cake

Celebrating big changes over this mouthwatering seasonal dessert

Story + Photography by Sarah Carroll

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Ah, cake. Better yet, rhubarb cake. The perfect seasonal dessert for a celebration. And boy does it ever feel like time for celebration. 

I’m celebrating some big things this week. And I want to share them with you. 

But first, some backstory so you know just how sweet this celebration is.

Rewind to this time last year. I was four months into what would become fourteen months of strict pandemic quarantine to keep me and my compromised immune system safe. I had just started a roller coaster journey to control a new mental health diagnosis with medications that turned my life upside down. And I was gratefully (but anxiously) beginning a new job at the Small Business Administration, joining the federal agency during perhaps the greatest crisis for small businesses in generations alongside a team of people I’d never met. 

It was a hard time. For many weeks, it was all I could do to get through the day, like so many people. 

With the help of one of our prospective board members, I made the deeply painful but important decision to take a pause from Greener Pastures for a few months to take care of my mental health. Sarah Wescott, our hero Communications Associate, stepped up to the plate and kept our projects rolling. 

It’s painful to hit pause on one’s passion. I felt like a lost hibernating animal, or maybe like a fox wounded by a trap, licking my paws and wondering why I wasn’t yet healed. I didn’t know how to get back to my sense of myself. I didn’t know how to find my joy, my creativity, my energy. 

Then I went outdoors. First, puttering numbly around my backyard. Picking a weed here, noticing the tiny growth of a lettuce leaf there. Then, as our Juneberry tree ripened, climbing atop the garage roof during lunch breaks to gather sweet purple berries.

As the high summer arrived and my husband and I braved quiet state park trails, I found blackcap raspberries and giant blackberries. Soon I was jumping in the car the moment the workday ended to drive to my favorite parks where the berry stands waited for me, equal parts medicine and hidden treasure.  

In early autumn, I could be found under the apple tree in my front yard, craning with an extendable fruit picker, plucking crisp red apples for pies. Or gathering the last of the tomatoes I grew to be pureed with extra veggies from our CSA (from Growing Lots Urban Farm) and frozen into sauces for the winter. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the seasonality of the food around me- immersing myself almost obsessively into picking, foraging, harvesting, cooking- was breathing life into me. Gathering the season’s bounty was reigniting my spirit. 

Profound experiences with our food- with sustenance, with nature- begets resilience. And I’d renewed my resilience. 

Fast forward to now. That resilience (plus a heck of a lot of help from family, friends, and the immense unearned structural privileges I benefit from) carried me over the finish line of two doses of the Moderna vaccine. Overnight it became safe to venture out into the world. Into the homes of my parents. Into the arms of my dearest friends. 

And, I think that resilience helped me venture into the Big Questions of what’s next for Greener Pastures. The ideas of what to create. What to test. What services to offer you, dear reader. The opportunities to do meaningful and urgent policy work to end factory farming and advance humane, sustainable, just food and farms. Those too have blossomed.

Just like the Juneberries, the blackberries, the apples over the last year, the time is ripe. 

So why am I celebrating? This week I’m ending my job with the Small Business Administration to devote my undivided attention to running and nourishing Greener Pastures as our full-time Executive Director. 

I’ve learned so much from working for SBA- from the farmers, restaurants, social ventures and so many more small businesses I’ve been honored to serve. And from my cherished coworkers who I’ll miss enormously. 

Amongst the bittersweetness and those moments when the risk-averse little voice in my head says, “what the heck are you doing!?” the thing I feel the most right now is joy, excitement, and possibility for making an impact together on our food system. And that’s something worth celebrating. 

So I invite you to celebrate with me!

This rhubarb cake is so easy to make but will leave your taste buds singing. I honed this modified coffee cake recipe over months of quarantine baking. But it truly wasn’t until I added a pasture-raised, free-range duck-egg from Graise Farm that I took it over the top (read our full farm feature on Graise Farm here). A humanely raised local duck egg is incredible for baking or cooking of any sort. The flavor and size of pastured duck egg yolks add so much richness to this simple cake. 

During my many iterations of baking this cake, I’ve landed on two options for how to make it, equally delicious. Bake it in a 10x9 cake pan and it’ll look just like our pictures: golden topped with lagoons of rhubarb and buttery cinnamon sugar. But pop it in a 10x5 loaf pan and the sides of the cake batter will magically envelop the rhubarb and cinnamon sugar layers, encasing them in a rich, bright, molten inner layer. Personally, I like the 10x5 best. But you do you, boo. 

I’ve served this rhubarb cake to my husband, to my mom, to my friends at our first post-vaccine potluck as I shared and celebrated the news of coming to GP full time. 

But rest assured- sharing the sweet seasonality of this dessert with loved ones is a celebration in and of itself. 

Happy ethical eating, 

Sarah Carroll

GP Founder and Executive Director

Rhubarb Cinnamon Sugar Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

 Instructions:

1. In a medium saucepan make the rhubarb compote. Add chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon (if desired) to the saucepan and add 1/8 cup of water. Bring to a simmer on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until the mixture becomes integrated and smooth. Remove from heat and set aside to cool completely. 

2.  Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare the cake batter by mixing the flour, sugars, egg, butter, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Either mix by hand or with an electric mixer on medium speed, adding a small trickle of cold water until the batter becomes integrated. The batter is ready when it is lump-free and stirs easily but drips off the spoon/whisk slowly. It should be on the thick side. 

3.  In a clean mixing bowl, combine the cinnamon sugar layer ingredients. Mix together the flour, sugars, butter, and cinnamon by hand or with an electric mixer, dribbling cold water to aid the formation of loose crumbs. Set the crumbs aside. 

4. Assemble the cake layers. Grease an 11x5 cake pan or a 9x5 pan loaf pan. The 11x5 will yield rhubarb compote and cinnamon sugar on top, and the 9x5 will yield molten layers of rhubarb and cinnamon sugar on the inside with a cake top. Spread the cake batter evenly to the pan, followed by the rhubarb compote. Top with the cinnamon sugar crumbs.

5. Bake at 350F. The 11x5 will bake for approximately 45 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. The 9x5 will bake for approximately 1 hour or until a toothpick emerges without batter but only rhubarb and cinnamon sugar, and should have a darker top. 

6. Serve hot and topped with powdered sugar. Optionally, top with your favorite seasonal fruit or drizzle any extra rhubarb compote on top. Enjoy!

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