Rhubarb and the Cake it Makes

Sugar would've helped. We have a rhubarb plant that will not die. This puts it in a minority of one. Everything else my wife and I carry indoors gives up within a week or two. Good intentions do not (apparently) coincide with vigilant watering. Stay with me, there's a point to this… Years ago, a potted rhubarb arrived as a gift shortly after my wife and I moved in. Since then I have dug it up and replanted it three times. It comes back every time. One summer I thought it was finished and threw it on the compost heap. It overruled me a few weeks later when it came back to life. Sure enough, it was settled in among the grass clippings and dregs of whatever else had died inside the house that month. There was also a patch at my parents' house. I distinctly recall 8-year-old me snapping a stalk off and biting down before remembering that sugar would have helped. I did this more than once, and never remembered in time. My mom made anything and everything out of it, and rhubarb sauce over ice cream remains a personal weakness of mine. Rhabarberkuchen mit Streusel was a different matter. It has stayed with me the way the plant stays in my yard (permanently and without consent). All of this doesn't look like much on its own. Essentially, it was just a sour mouthful of a snapped stalk from a plant nobody could successfully get rid of. And cake. Plenty of cake. But small things, like memories, unknowingly accumulate while you're otherwise busy living life. Memories keep the rhubarb and lose the things you would've chosen instead (like where my spare house keys are hiding). This cake from my childhood is a snippet of heritage and legacy I'm passing on to my kids. It's my mom's recipe, and her own mother made it before her. If only one thing can be handed down through the generations, let it be cake. → Oma's German Rhubarb Cake with Streusel P.S. The recipe says to test your rhubarb by snapping a piece off and checking it is juicy inside. I had that technique perfected by age eight. The only refinement I have added since is the sugar.

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Rhubarb and the Cake it Makes

Sugar would've helped.

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