Summer is finally here!

Sarah of Colorado Crafted and Two Tarts reminded me it was summer when she posted a beautiful picture of her Rhubarb Cake on Facebook. I later found out she was inspired by the rhubarb recipe she saw on Smitten Kitchen and I naturally had to try to make this beautiful cake for my own brunch party.

I didn't have all the ingredients necessary to make the picnic bars on Smitten Kitchen, so I decided to research how to make my rhubarb chevron pattern with another recipe for a dense cake. This got me thinking to my recent trip to Hawaii and the wonderfully dense and delicious blueberry mochi cake that my friend had made. Ever since I came back to the mainland, I wanted to try it...so here we are!

Over the weekend, I went searching for rhubarb at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market. I searched every booth for the perfect gradient colors to go into our Rhubarb Ombré Cake, but couldn't find the right combination from any one stall. At the end, I decided the best thing to do was to buy the beautiful red stalks we saw from one stall and the speckled green ones from another one.

After gathering your ingredients, perfectly gradient rhubarb and the right pan (preferably the Pyrex 232 bakeware) It is important to cut the rhubarb into perfect parallelograms to get three columns of the chevron pattern into my Pyrex 232 pink desert dawn baking pan!

If I make this again next time, I am definitely going to have less green rows and more of the red rows. Even though the gradient was beautiful - it didn't shift to red fast enough for me. I guess I am particular to the color red.

I have so much rhubarb left and will need to figure out what to do with the rest of my stalks. Rhubarb jam, anyone?

Try my recipe and let me know what you think!

Oh and it's gluten-free!

Rhubarb Ombre Mochi Cake

Cake:
1/2 cup butter (melted)
2 cups coconut sugar
1 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 pound mochiko (1 box)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup diced rhubarb

Topping:
About two stalks rhubarb cut into parellelograms
1/4 cup melted jelly of your choice (I used lilac jelly)

Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

Mix the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
Mix in the yogurt and vanilla extract.
Mix in the eggs.
Mix in the mochiko and baking powder.
Mix in the rhubarb.
Pour the batter into a greased Pyrex 232 baking pan (or a 9X13 pan).
Bake in oven until golden brown on top and a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean, about 1 hour.

After the cake is slightly cooled - brush warmed jelly onto the rhubarb for a glossy and glamorous appearance!

Parallelogram Tips: Cut the stalks in half. Then while they are sandwiched, cut them into parallelograms. Try to arrange them outside of the pan first to make sure you have the requisite number of columns first. Once you feel certain, then duplicate the rest of the cuttings and arrange! Ta Da!