When I was a small girl living in the Welsh hills we had an elderly neighbour called Mrs Matthews who lived just five minutes walk away. Every Autumn, around this time of year, my mum would send me down to visit Mrs Matthews where I would collect armfuls of beautiful thick pink rhubarb wrapped in newspaper. When I returned home , my mum would gently unwrap my precious parcel, use a knife to peel off the pink skin which fell away in curls, and dunk a chunk of rhubarb into a big bag of white sugar for me to eat. Then she would cut up the rest for a delicious crumble, usually made with apples that fell from the trees in our garden.

It’s hard to find rhubarb in Italy – it’s not exactly a Mediterranean crop after all – but a few years ago I discovered a rhubarb plant at a local market and planted it in my garden. It’s not the happiest rhubarb plant I’ve ever seen, with spindly stems very unlike the ones grown by Mrs Matthews, but today I pulled it up and made a delicious cake with some apples given to me by an Italian friend and some eggs laid by my chickens just a few hours earlier. If you can’t get hold of rhubarb then just double up the apples or replace it with another fruit such as pears or even plums.

Ingredients

400g of rhubarb, around 250g once trimmed and peeled 
400g of apples, around 200g once peeled and cored 
220g self raising flour
220g brown sugar
140g butter
Three eggs
A heaped teaspoon of cinnamon
A half teaspoon of nutmeg
Butter for greasing the dish

Method

Start by creaming the butter with the sugar, then beat the eggs and add them to the mixture

Peel and core the apples before grating them. Trim and peel the rhubarb and cut into small pieces.

Mix in the grated apple and rhubarb pieces before folding in the flour and spices. Then tip the mixture into a greased dish and bake for 30 minutes at 220C.

You can eat the cake warm with custard or ice cream or try to wait until its cold! This one brought back a lot of memories.