Rhubarb and Custard cupcakes

Sometimes, good things go hand in hand. Like discovering your new favourite café just doors up from where you live, then realising that is doubles as a chocolatier and old fashioned sweet shop at the front. I swear this isn’t a hallucination brought on by excessive cheesecake consumption, although if any cheesecake could bring on mass hysteria and visual disturbance, the brownie-and-blondie layered cheesecake is probably the one to do it. Especially after a thick wedge of goats cheese and prosciutto sandwich. Plus, you can choose your tea from a wall full of glass jars of leaves blended with flowers, dried fruit and a smorgasbord of other treats. Like the ‘Bounty’, a rich tea blend with coconut and hibiscus. Even reading that makes me want a cup. 

 

Its the place I go when I need a treat, and luckily Tom is as big a fan of real tea brewed in individual pots as I am, so we go plenty.

I have no idea how it took me this long to try out the sweet shop, but the urge finally caught up with me when someone I barely know brought lemon sherbets into placement to share out. And ohmygoodness andgoodgrief why don't I eat proper boiled sweets anymore? So much better than haribo, fruit pastilles, whatever your particular sugar rush is, these are just the real thing. And they last for AGES, which can only be a good thing when your mouth is filled with sweet lemony fizz.

So, to bring a long anecdote to its natural end, I dutifully went out and bought a nice big bag of rhubarb and custards.

Surely I can't be the only one who hears this when I say 'Rhubarb and custard'?

And I was very happy for as long as it took the rest of the bag to lose its crusty sugar coating and get really quite sticky in its paper bag- I told you it was a nice big bag; even my obsessive nibbling couldn't cut it. And as I was peeling the paper off (alright, sucking the paper off, you got me), I got to wondering why I hadn't tried a rhubarb and custard cake. 

 

That's when the next really good thing happened, in the shape of rhubarb appearing in the fruit and veg stall. This is a big deal when you're a student, as buying luxury fruits (ie, not apples) can get pretty pricey in the supermarkets. So I bought some of the start of the season rhubarb and it was tough at the ends, and I had to peel long strips of pink and green, which promptly flew all over my kitchen floor. But it was hard to keep the smile off my face as I roasted chunks with sugar (golden caster), ginger (ground) and lemon zest until gooey. I was still smiling when the fibrous rhubarb goo clogged my cheap piping nozzles and I had to change and clean after every single piping.

My icing is custard powder, icing sugar, butter and vanilla essence. I'm glossing over it a little because it wasn't all that good and I'm still thinking of a substitute. But it looked very fetching in its sunny yellow glossiness. Lastly, I woke all my housemates smashing up some of the leftover sweets in a pestle and mortar to top.

I got this pink cupcake stand for my birthday and I just had to show it off somehow. Who'd have thought pink and yellow look so happy together?

This cake, not unlike my photography effort, needs some serious work. The topping is much too sweet, and the filling was disappointingly unfilled. I think next time splitting the cakes to fill like miniature Victoria sponges might give a better rhubarb to cake ratio, and I suppose I might just have to make my own custard to top.

Or fill with custard, doughnut style, and top with rhubarb chunks? 
 

But as a first effort it's not so bad, and every time I passes these little beauties in my kitchen, they put that big smile right back on my face. And I can't think of a single better reason to get the mixing bowl back out.