As you might expect in what is a family's 'moving story' - and Lynne will tell you all about it - there's not a huge emphasis on food in Lettice Cooper's The New House. Various people have odd cups of tea, bread and butter and the like, but it's a comparatively cake-free book. There is, however, a strong visual sense evident throughout, so for instance Delia imagines her flat decorated with "plain, pale wood, with bowls of jade and orange, or great heaps of cushions, raspberry red, silver green and the deep blue-purple of anemones", and Rhoda picks from the garden "a dark red rose, the scarlet flowers of a geum, a handful of flame and gold nasturtiums...".
With this in mind I thought a cake with some colour to it might be the thing for this month's Persephone tea, and as The New House is set in Yorkshire, I popped across to the famous Betty's of Harrogate for inspiration and I found it in the form of Yorkshire Rhubarb Cake.
Casting around for a recipe I was taken by the one in this article (scroll down) which uses spelt flour, so with a bag of Mr. Mulberry's finest (and he must be a good man as he rears Manx rare breed sheep on his farm - blankets, anyone?) I set to work. The rhubarb is trimmed to the length of the cake tin and packed in tightly on top of the mixture before baking; this resulted in some 'sinkage', shall we say, which means I don't measure up to Evelyn in the book: "What she did, she did well. She did not ... bake a lop-sided cake that was sad in the middle, and offer it, laughing and apologetic, to her guests."
Oh well, that's me told. If we concentrate on taste and texture instead of looks, you'll find it's quite dense and fudgy, studded with pieces of ginger and brushed with ginger syrup, the rhubarb prettily pink and lending its own distinctive tang, so it's actually quite scrumptious!
That looks delicious! I have The New House on my To be read pile. It was a gift from my Persephone Secret Santa. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Posted by: Mrs.B. | 31 March 2010 at 01:16 AM
That sounds fantastic! Yum yum!
Posted by: Verity | 31 March 2010 at 09:15 AM
That looks delicious! The New House sounds super - I must pick it up when I'm next in Persephone Books.
Posted by: skirmishofwit | 31 March 2010 at 10:49 AM
'...studded with pieces of ginger and brushed with ginger syrup', oohhh yes please! Your china is very pretty too.
There a few Persephone titles that I'd like to add to my collection and this is one of them.
Posted by: Darlene | 31 March 2010 at 12:46 PM
Love the look of the cake and even better, what I think is Haddon Hall tea service?
Posted by: Margaret Powling | 31 March 2010 at 04:41 PM
I never thought I would like rhubarb, but that looks delicious! How did I miss your Persephone books and cakes? Must go back and check them out. And I have the Virago editition of the book and must get to it sometime soon. Lovely photos!
Posted by: Danielle | 31 March 2010 at 05:58 PM
Would the cake have 'worked' if the lengths of rhubarb had been tightly packed in the bottom of the pan before adding the batter? [That's the sort of question you'll get from a non-baker - namely, me.]
Posted by: Nancy | 31 March 2010 at 09:30 PM
All your cakes look so delicious.
Posted by: knittingoutloud | 31 March 2010 at 10:39 PM
Oh, how I love rhubarb! Persephone too, of course, but there's not as many vitamins in a Persephone.
Lulu
www.lampandbook.blogspot.com
Posted by: Lulu | 06 April 2010 at 01:10 AM