Sugar Top Rhubarb Muffins

My mom is great at a lot of things and the one I’ve become most jealous of as I’ve gotten older is her knack for growing incredible rhubarb. She just knows where to put it (sunny spot, ideally against a wall) and how to use it. The back wall of the barn in Wisconsin was lined with lush, vibrant stalks of wonder. That color! I’m often in awe of what nature can produce but she really outdoes herself with the color of rhubarb stalks.

So when spring was turning to summer we would have a glut of it and my mom would start to make these muffins which we would then have regularly until mid summer when the rhubarb was done for the year. In the years when she had time to freeze some of the harvest it was heavenly to wake up in the middle of winter to smell them baking.

Rhubarb is technically a vegetable but is most often treated as a fruit and used in desserts. Although I’m waiting for a reason to use a whole leg of lamb so I can make Nadiya Hussain’s sticky rhubarb glaze. The word I think a lot of people associate with it is “tart” or “tangy” but I would go with astringent when it’s raw and still sharp when cooked unless you add a decent amount of sugar.

The thing I love about these muffins is that the batter itself isn’t overly sweet so the actual flavor of the rhubarb is allowed to come through. I’m not a fan of recipes that bully an ingredient into being something it isn’t. If you want sweet, use something sweet. Don’t take something decidedly sour and force it to become a strawberry. By adding the sugar on top of the muffin as a crumble it gives it some lift without making the whole cloying.

Like a much more considerate version of this cake, these muffins can take on a lot of fruit and do really well. They are great with apples in the autumn. Pears could work. I’m obsessed with dates right now and am trying to work them into anything and these muffins are a candidate. Use your imagination if you don’t have any rhubarb available and then plant yourself in a sunny spot, ideally against a wall, with a cup of coffee and one of these lovely muffins.

Baking

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Ingredients

This is my mom’s recipe so everything is in cups not grams

1 1/4 cups soft brown sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup buttermilk

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups diced rhubarb

OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

For the topping

1 Tbsp melted butter

1/3 cup caster sugar

1 Tbsp ground cinnamon

Instructions

Line your muffin tins with 18 liners for the kind of rise you see in the photo above. If you’d like them to be a little smaller you can get 24 out of the batch. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan.

You can put this together in a stand mixer, if you have one but I find it is easier with a hand mixer because of alternating the dry/wet ingredients later. Put the SOFT BROWN SUGAR and VEGETABLE OIL in a large bowl and mix together until all the sugar is moistened.

Add your EGG and mix well. You can turn up the speed a bit here because you want it to get to the light and fluffy stage.

Add the VANILLA and mix through. Set that bowl aside.

In a separate bowl, put together the FLOUR, BAKING SODA, BAKING POWDER, and SALT. Stir it with a fork or a whisk so you distribute everything evenly throughout the flour.

Get your sugar bowl, the flour bowl and measure out your BUTTERMILK. Starting with the flour bowl, add about a third to the sugar bowl and mix. Then add about a third of the buttermilk and mix. Keep alternating like this until you have everything in the sugar bowl and you’ve got a nice batter.

Fold the DICED RHUBARB into your batter. (and the walnuts if you’re using them. My mom is a great lover of walnuts in baking – I’m still learning to appreciate them.)

You want to fill the lined muffin tins about 2/3 full so there’s room for the topping. The easiest way I’ve found to do it is to use a 1/3 cup measuring cup which is about the right size with the added benefit of most of the muffins coming out similarly shaped.

Take a small bowl and add the MELTED BUTTER, CASTER SUGAR and GROUND CINNAMON. Stir that together and sprinkle it on the top of the filled tins. Press it lightly into the batter.

Put your muffin tins into the oven for 20-24 minutes. Start watching from 20 minutes. You want them to be nicely risen and golden brown. The sugar on top will catch if you leave them in too long so do keep an eye on it.

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