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Dorie Greenspan’s Rhubarb Upside-Down Brown Sugar Cake with Fresh Strawberries and Crème Fraiche

Dorie Greenspan’s Rhubarb Upside-Down Brown Sugar Cake with Fresh Strawberries and Crème Fraiche
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In the annals of Chewing the Fat, never has one cake come close to having a name as long as this one.  However, I could write a new adage: ‘the longer the name, the better the cake’.  Because I’d be hard-pressed to find a salute to Rhubarb and Strawberry season that tasted any more delicious.  Combining tart Rhubarb with the sweetness of Strawberries and the tang of Crème Fraiche is inspired. And the cake itself has the warmth of brown sugar in every bite.   As you can see it’s from Dorie Greenspan in her masterful book “Baking Chez Moi” (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt 1014) . Now I don’t do the baking around here, but if I did, I’d be hard-pressed to find a writer who puts more into recipe directions than Ms. Greenspan. I concede that Baking is a science, and far more exacting than most of my cooking.  So it amused me no end when a writer with a blog called “That Skinny Chick can Bake” wrote about her ahah! moment with this cake: “French cooking does not necessarily mean complicated.  A simple layering of flavors can produce a masterpiece”.  And apparently a word count running into the thousands. 
At the moment, Rhubarb and Strawberries can be found at our Farmstand in great quantities.  They’re one of the great joys of the season and together they’re an unbeatable combination of tart and sweet.  And the color of the strawberries is a huge help in making this dessert irresistible in color.  “That
Skinny Chick” calls the cake “A simple cake topped with glistening rhubarb”.  Simple?  I’ll take her word for it.  And after Andrew had peeled the rhubarb, I
concede that things went a lot quicker.  The recipe also was a lot simpler once I’d cut
Ms. Greenspan’s directions down to size. Here is the recipe:

 


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