12 Tips For Baking With Rhubarb This Summer

We humans are hardwired to enjoy sweetness. Yet, while we love sweetness, it's also possible to have too much of a good thing. That's why vintners know to make ice wine that balances its honey-sweetness with acidity, and why we love tart ingredients like lemons and limes in our baked goods.

Another ingredient that brings a tart balance to sweet baked goods is rhubarb. It's one of the handful of fresh ingredients that remains stubbornly seasonal, arriving in spring and lingering into early summer. Unlike most fruits and berries, it's rare to see rhubarb shipped in when it's out of season (though you can sometimes find it frozen), so you'll want to make full use of it while it's available.

I'm a big fan of rhubarb because, where I grew up (Atlantic Canada), local strawberries don't hit until well into June. That makes rhubarb our quintessential spring treat, showing up as early as April. I grew up looking forward to rhubarb season, and I've used it both as a home baker and in my career as a trained chef and sometimes commercial baker. Rhubarb has its quirks as an ingredient (it's a vegetable, not a fruit, and in fact it's related to buckwheat), so there are some tips you'll need to know if you're going to bake with it. Here are a few of my favorites.

Two of rhubarb's quirks have a direct impact on the quality and texture of your baked goods, so let's start there. One is that it's over 90% water by weight, according to the USDA's nutrition database. Also, like some other vegetables it can be stringy, because fiber accounts for almost a third of what isn't water.

You can reduce the impact of rhubarb's fiber and moisture levels through one simple tip: Cut them small, even if you're in a hurry. Big pieces will shed a lot of water all in one spot, leaving empty spaces as they shrink, and making soggy, gummy spots in the batter all around them. Then, because they're stringy, the pieces will tend to come out all in one tart lump when you bite into your baked goods (and you may even get some stuck between your teeth). In the case of cakes or bar cookies, it'll also be harder to get nice, clean slices.

So the bottom line is that you don't want big chunks in your rhubarb cake, or especially rhubarb muffins, because these unfortunate downsides are more obvious in a smaller baked good. So even if you've bought much too much rhubarb all at once, and your hands are getting tired, keep chopping. You'll be grateful when your cake comes out of the oven.

Keeping the pieces small is one way to deal with rhubarb's high levels of moisture. But there's another option, one you're probably familiar with from savory recipes using high-moisture ingredients.

With cucumbers, zucchini, or eggplant, for example, recipes often call for salting the slices and letting them drain before cooking. The salt draws moisture out of the vegetable, so it doesn't make your dish watery. It's the same with rhubarb, except you'll use sugar to help draw out the moisture (it's called "macerating" your rhubarb, or berries, or whatever). Toss your chopped rhubarb pieces with sugar, then leave them in a colander over a bowl to capture the juices as they ooze out.

It's a sweet trick that helps keep your rhubarb pie filling from being runny, or your rhubarb cake from being soggy and disappointing. The sweetened juices that run out are a good ingredient in their own right: You can cook the juices to concentrate and thicken them, for example, and then add them back to your pie. You could also use them as a glaze on meats or baked goods, or even use the resulting tart syrup creatively in rhubarb-flavored mocktails and cocktails.

Cakes vary pretty dramatically in their level of sophistication. Quick cakes or coffee cakes are fast to bake and relatively rustic, with a relatively coarse and loose crumb (texture). More sophisticated cakes use varying techniques to give a finer, more elegant crumb and a smoother texture.

Rhubarb cake recipes tend to fall into the quick coffee-cake category, which is only natural since rhubarb is a rustic, homestyle ingredient that's a natural fit for this unpretentious style of cake (though rhubarb pound cake is also a thing that exists, and it's really good). So if you're thinking of making a rhubarb cake while it's in season, here's a suggestion: Spread your rhubarb pieces over the top, instead of stirring them in. There are a lot of reasons why this is a good idea.

One option to consider with these cakes is scattering your rhubarb over the top instead of stirring it in. First, it reduces the risk of over-mixing your cake and making it tough. Second, the juices that cook out of the rhubarb tint the cake a beautiful pink as it bakes. Finally, it's a great way to prevent soggy rhubarb cake. By shedding those juices before they sink into your cake batter, the pieces of rhubarb are less likely to make soggy pockets in the finished slices.

I know a few bakers who are reluctant to use rhubarb, simply because it takes so much extra sugar to balance out its assertive tartness. There are alternative sweetening options you can use, but if you grow your own rhubarb, you can actually make it sweeter through a nifty gardening hack.

This is a wartime trick, from when fruit was rationed (because anybody could grow rhubarb in their own yard), and a few old-timers still did it when I was young. In the very early spring, perhaps March or April, cover over one or two of your rhubarb crowns with a 5-gallon bucket or a similarly-sized plant pot to cut off the sunlight (you might want to wrap the bucket in cloth, or a garbage bag, because some light will get through the white plastic).

This technique, called "forcing" or "blanching," means the plants draw on sugars in their root crowns to produce new growth, instead of photosynthesis. This produces a pale, sweeter stem with a delicate flavor and less need for sugar (some rhubarb is grown this way in England, commercially). It's similar to how white asparagus is grown, or Belgian endive. Just don't do this to the same plant the next year, because it's hard on them and they'll need a normal summer or two of growth to recover.

For some of us, strawberries and rhubarb conjure up a line from Sinatra's "Love and Marriage:" "You can't have one without the other." I get it, it's a combination that works beautifully. Their flavors are compatible, their colors are compatible, and they're both early-season staples. It's a natural pairing.

But really, if you want to get the most out of rhubarb season, you need to find some new horizons, and "think outside the strawberry." There are plenty of other pairings that make wonderful sense culinarily, though they may or may not be as seasonal and regional. Citrus is a great pairing for rhubarb, for example, and the beginning of rhubarb season overlaps with the tail end of citrus season (especially blood oranges, which are a nice color match).

Rhubarb pairs beautifully with other berries, like raspberries and blackberries (freeze your rhubarb until high summer, or buy the berries out of season). Most stone fruits, like peaches, plums, and cherries, play really well with rhubarb's tang and color. Where I live, apples and wild blueberries are both major crops, so I'll often combine them with rhubarb. Their seasons don't really align, with apples being a fall crop and blueberries a summer crop, but apples are available year-round, and I usually have a few pounds of wild blueberries in my freezer.

Most recipes let rhubarb pie filling take care of itself. You toss the cut-up stems with sugar, thickeners, and spices, and by the time the rhubarb begins to cook down and soften, the pie crust is nicely set. The rhubarb and its thickener can get on with the job, and not make your crust soggy.

Still, I'm a strong advocate of making up a batch or two of filling and having them ready on hand, whether plain, strawberry-rhubarb, or any other combination. The important part is that you have it already made, whether frozen for storage or ready-to-use in your fridge. Why? Because it means you can crank out quick, tasty desserts at the drop of a hat, even if they don't give you the long baking time needed for a filling to self-thicken.

What kind of desserts? Well, you could simply spoon it over vanilla ice cream, or yogurt, or the soft yogurt cheese called labneh (that's Ina Garten's favorite way to eat rhubarb). Use it to fill pre-baked tart or tartlet shells, top it with biscuit dough for a quick cobbler, or sprinkle granola over it for a quick "rhubarb crisp." I like to add a dollop to my muffin batter for fruit-filled muffins, which the grandkids love in their school lunches. One tip: Cornstarch will "weep" when it's frozen and thawed, so thicken the filling with arrowroot instead if you plan to freeze it.

Speaking of cornstarch and arrowroot, most rhubarb-based desserts use starches like these (or plain old flour) for their thickener. They have a lot of practical advantages in this kind of dessert: They work, they're inexpensive, and you probably already have a few in your pantry.

But starches aren't the only thickening options used in baking, and some of those alternatives are good choices with rhubarb. To start, rhubarb has enough natural acidity and pectin to self-thicken if you draw out the juices with sugar and then cook them down before adding the cut-up pieces. In some desserts, you might also use gelatin and then either let it set or whip it to a froth for a mousse.

The most useful alternative, though, is eggs. If you're used to the starch-thickened kind of rhubarb pie, try a rhubarb or strawberry-rhubarb custard pie for your next dessert. I'd never heard of this option when I was growing up, and it proved to be a revelation. It's a richer, creamier alternative than the fruit-only pies I was familiar with, and the eggs of the custard filling worked just as well as a thickener.

Earlier I spoke of raising blanched rhubarb as a way to reduce the amount of sugar it needs. There's another, sneakier way to do the same thing, by increasing the perception of sweetness without actually using more sweetener. The "secret ingredient" is one of my favorites: natural vanilla.

Real vanilla has some of the most complex flavors to occur in nature, with hundreds of identifiable flavor molecules that give it a richly nuanced flavor profile. Artificial vanilla extract uses a synthetic version of just one, called vanillin, which is the key difference between natural and artificial vanilla. Natural vanilla extract does a better job of retaining those flavors, but for the best results, chefs and bakers like me prefer to use either a real vanilla bean or a vanilla bean paste.

Adding this elegant ingredient to a rustic rhubarb dessert may seem unintuitive, but trust me: It's worth trying. Adding the seeds and sticky pulp from a vanilla bean to your rhubarb dessert, or a commercial vanilla bean paste for its convenience, elevates the dessert's flavor dramatically. Your (for example) strawberry rhubarb pie tastes sweeter with vanilla, even if you haven't dialed up the amount of sugar your recipe calls for.

If you stroll through the tables at your local farmer's market during rhubarb season, you'll see that it comes in a spectrum of shades. Some stems are almost all green, some are speckled with pink, and others are a rich red.

There's no purely culinary reason to favor one kind over another. To begin with, because some people wonder about it, green rhubarb is perfectly safe to eat. It's also not true that red stems are sweeter or more flavorful than green; they all taste pretty much the same. In my cooking classes, I usually used chard as an analogy. Its stems can be white or red or even bright golden, but they all taste the same.

That said, there's one specific scenario where I'll always choose red stems. That's when I'm making a tart, because tarts look best when you choose slender, red stems that are all roughly the same thickness. Then, depending on how fancy you want to be, you can cut long pieces at an angle to make a wedge or herringbone pattern in the tart shell (yes, this is an exception to the "cut your pieces small" rule I mentioned earlier). Arranging the pieces in your tart pan can be time-consuming, but the end result is eye-catching.

Along the way, I've mentioned more than once how wet rhubarb can be, and a few of the tips above (macerating the berries, cutting your pieces small, using various thickeners) address that issue. One thing you need to be aware of, though, is that you can do everything right and still end up with a soggy pie. Let me explain.

The biggest single reason, and the one I see people making the most often, is simply cutting into the pie too soon. I get it, I really do. Rhubarb pie smells so good, when it's fresh and warm from the oven, that it's hard to wait for it to cool down. But you really need to do that, because the filling won't completely set until it's cool. If you cut into it too soon, those excess juices will soak right into your crust and turn it to mush.

Another mistake people make is putting their pie into the fridge after it's been cut. You really should avoid storing rhubarb pie in the fridge (or most other fruit pies, for that matter), because it softens the flaky crust and helps moisture seep in. I'm a former food safety trainer, and I can assure you that rhubarb pie is acidic enough to keep safely at room temperature for a few days. The exception is a rhubarb custard pie, because any filling containing eggs needs refrigeration.

One question I used to hear sometimes in my cooking classes is "Do you have to peel fresh rhubarb?" Generally speaking, the answer is "You do you." You don't need to, by any means, but some people prefer it that way. I know people who peel asparagus, too, though I generally don't bother. It's a personal preference thing.

The short version is that peeling can make your rhubarb slightly less stringy in the finished baked goods, but the downside is extra prep and a bit of waste. I'm not keen on either of those things, honestly. Yet there is one instance where I make an exception to this broad rule, and that's late-summer rhubarb.

Rhubarb is at its best in the spring and early summer, and then as it matures in mid-summer, it begins (like many other vegetables) to become stringier or maybe even a bit woody. It's still perfectly edible, and tastes about the same, it's just not as choice. You can fix this by simply using your peeler to remove the skin, which has most of the stringy fibers, or pinching the ends between your thumb and a paring knife and pulling the strings away. That tip also works for de-stringing celery, by the way, if you have some ribs that are especially chewy.

As I've said previously, strawberries and rhubarb are a slam-dunk combination that always works. But rhubarb is capable of so much more, and mixing up your fruit pairings is only the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of other flavors you can put together with rhubarb, and some of them may leave you wondering why you've clung to the tried-and-true for so long.

Like many chefs and professional bakers, I keep a well-stocked spice cupboard, and I grow plenty of herbs in my garden. Rhubarb works beautifully with many of those flavors. Fresh mint from my garden works surprisingly well with rhubarb, for example. So does fresh ginger, green or white cardamoms, nutmeg, caraway, anise, and coriander seed (especially in recipes that also use citrus). Rhubarb also plays nicely with most nuts, like walnuts, pecans, or almonds, and with almond or hazelnut extract. Then there are flavored liqueurs like amaretto, kirsch, or Grand Marnier, all of which work well in rhubarb desserts. (Quick rule: If a thing tastes good with rhubarb, the corresponding liqueur probably does, too.)

Another angle is to look at recipes you already use and love, and mentally review how well they'd pair with rhubarb. Try adding it to your favorite lemon bars recipe, for example, or to a white-chocolate blondie. In general, rhubarb's sharp tang makes it worth trying in any recipe you find overly sweet.