The Rhubarb Kitchen Part II - Rhubarb Pudding Pieces

Rhubarb Pudding Pieces "Plunder"

Hey there, me again. This time with something more filling and perfect for the coffee time on a spring  afternoon. In Germany we call these babies "Plunder", because they are cute and filling but also really not that healthy. But its a treat and treats are allowed to be sweet and sugary. 

The basic recipe is a very nice pudding piece. You can easily just make them like that and still have a wonderful coffee companion. But its spring and I like things from our garden and whats in season, so rhubarb would be a perfect sour counterpart to the sugary pudding. Slightly cooked and boiled to a soft but still shape keeping state, thats the right amount of softness we need. Also, if you can get your hands on some strawberry rhubarb, lucky you. Your pieces will look beautifully pink. A real eyecatcher. Peeling the rhubarb is a fun task (at least for me). Its peeling itself in wonderful bouncy curls (and you can see, I had to play with them in my photos). To be honest, I could make the dough myself, but I usually haven't got time for it, so ready-made-dough should be fine.

There is just something rural about rhubarb, maybe due to my mom, who always reminds me, how much she loved her mothers rhubarb juice and the masses they had in their garden. So I romanticize about warm summer evenings in the 70s and a glass of cold rhubarb juice, or in this case, a piece of rhubarb puddingness.

There is not really much you need to do:

Ingredients:

• 200g rhubarb
• 2 Tblsp sugar
• ready-made/or self-made puff pastry
• 2 bags vanilla pudding
• 400g milk
• 50g cream
• 3 Tblsp sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• icing sugar
• lemon juice/water

Instructions:

• first, peel the rhubarb and cut into nice, angled pieces (2-3cm long) and pour them into a pot
• pour the sugar above, mix and let sit for 30min
• heat the pot up and let the rhubarb simmer for 10min. Keep watching over the rhubarb, so it down´t fall apart (good tip I learned, move the pot to stir the mixture around and not a spoon. This way the rhubarb will stay in pieces)
• let it cool down
• roll out your puff pastry, cut them into small strings (1cm), you need 2 strings per piece
• roll them into a bretzel-shape, by making a circle, with leftover string, twirl them around each other and connect to the bottom half of the circle, you need those two round holes for the pudding filling
• preheat the oven to 180°C and bake for 10 minutes
• meanwhile, mix the cream, milk and pudding bags in a pot and heat it up
• always keep stiring, until the mixture gets a little bit firmer
• now, take some of it and mix with the egg yolks and the sugar, be careful, if it is too hot, the egg yolk will flocculate
• add it back into the pot and heat it up, until it reached a pudding like consistency
• take your pastry out of the oven and add the pudding into a piping bag, to pipe swirls into ht holes
• add some rhubarb on top and bake for another 5 min.
• Now, mix the icing sugar with some water, of I prefer lemon juice
• Take the pieces out of the oven and brush the sugar on top, while they are still warm

and Voilà, pudding pieces for your sweet rhubarb cravings

Let those good old fashioned garden fruits live up again.

Until next time,

Have a wonderful spring day and hopefully a sunshine flood mind

See you, my lovelies