Ok you guys. It has been too long. Again. But I promise I have good reasons: 3 jobs, a show (The Sound of Music!), and sunlight. I’ve been nannying part time, working at the office part time, and doing social media an hour a day, then going to many many hours of rehearsal in a suburb or Portland. So no time for cooking OR blogging. But here I am, backstage at the show, and I decided, I HAVE to do this.
You’ll have to excuse the iPhone photos for the next couple of posts (or Instagram, whichever I had the energy to use). Along with leaving my 8×8 pan at the cabin in the woods (which it turns out I needed for this recipe), I also left my camera charger… so my camera was sitting, dead and useless, for quite a while. So I know the pictures aren’t as good of quality as usual, but just bear with me until I get my camera up and running again!
I found this recipe on Food52 while looking for shortbread recipes to eat with a fruit compote. I love rhubarb, and am always looking for different and unique recipes, so I thought this would be a fun one to try. Warning: it is labor intensive and dish heavy. Read through this recipe all the way before you start. Please. You’ve been warned. Here’s what you’ll need:
Rhubarb Curd Shortbread
Ingredients
Rhubarb Curd
3/4 lb rhubarb (about 6 stalks)
4 Tbl water
1/4 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup plus 1/8 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tsp lemon juice
3 Tbl butter, cut into chunks
Shortbread Crust
12 Tbl butter, cut into chunks
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground clove
Instructions
Rhubarb Curd
First, cut the rhubarb into one inch pieces. Heat the rhubarb, 1/4 cup of sugar, and water in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook it until the rhubarb is falling apart and there are no whole pieces left (you can help it along by mashing with your mixing tool, a wooden spoon works great). It you have an immersion blender or a regular blender, puree the mixture. If you don’t have either of those, push the mixture through a strainer. I advise one of the blender methods.
If you have a double boiler, put a couple inches of water in the pot of it and set it over medium heat. If you don’t have a double boiler, find two pots that are about the same diameter, so that one can be set atop the other without going into whatever is in the bottom pot. Put egg yolks, butter, remaining sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice in the top pot and set over the simmering bottom pot, and whisk to combine. When the sugar dissolves, add the rhubarb puree by the spoonful (to temper the eggs). When all the rhubarb is added, put the pot over the boil again. Stir for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is warm and slightly thickened, then remove from heat. Press the mixture through a strainer – this is an important step! It’ll give the curd a smooth texture.
Shortbread Crust
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees while you make the shortbread: blend all the ingredients for the shortbread in a stand mixer or food processor. Now, the recipe says to wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate it, but I didn’t and it was just fine. The recipe also says to roll it into an 8X8 square and put it into an 8X8 pan… but I just dumped the dough into a pie dish and pushed it outwards until it was spread out. Bake the shortbread for 30 minutes until golden brown. Set to cool on a rack.
Use a spatula to spread the curd evenly over the shortbread. Put it in the oven for another 10 minutes, remove, and allow to cool on a rack. Then refrigerate for another 20 minutes. It’ll be nice and firm enough to slice cleanly. Enjoy! (If you want to wait another couple minutes, you can dust with powdered sugar… I couldn’t wait.)
