Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake -- From the Garden to the Table, One Summer Evening

Summer, and the garden is my morning before-writing activity — ten minutes of watering and weeding and talking to the tomatoes before I sit down with the journal. The tomatoes are green and promising. The basil is fragrant. The zucchini is, as always, overachieving. The garden is a small thing — a patch of dirt behind a Cape Cod house on Long Island — but the smallness is the point: it is mine, it is manageable, it produces food, and the production of food from dirt and water and sunlight is still, after all these years, the most miraculous thing I know how to do.

I am writing about Sylvia's kitchen — the apartment on the Grand Concourse, the small galley kitchen where my mother produced meals for six with the efficiency of a submarine engineer. The writing is coming in fragments — scenes, memories, sensory details. The smell of onions on a Tuesday. The sound of the pressure cooker. The way Sylvia's hands looked when she braided challah — her knuckles, her rings, the flour in the creases of her palms. The fragments are not a book yet. They are the ingredients of a book. I am gathering the ingredients the way I gather ingredients for a stew: methodically, intentionally, knowing that the cooking will come later, that the gathering is the first step, and the first step is the most important step, because everything that follows depends on what you put in the pot.

Marvin and I sat on the porch after dinner. The evenings are long in June and the light lingers and we sat in our chairs — the same chairs, the same porch, the same view of the Bermans' lawn — and Marvin was quiet and I was quiet and the quiet was not empty, it was full, full of forty years of evenings on this porch, full of the conversations we used to have and the silence we now share, and the silence is its own language, and I am becoming fluent in it.

After those long June evenings on the porch with Marvin — the quiet ones, the full ones — I found myself wanting to do something with my hands that wasn’t writing. The rhubarb along the back fence had been ready for days, and there is something about pulling those long red stalks and carrying them into the kitchen that feels like completing a sentence. This cake is what I made: upside-down, like memory, the tart buried under the sweet, everything revealed only when you flip it over and trust that it held together.

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, for topping
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3 cups fresh rhubarb, sliced 1/2-inch thick
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup whole milk

Instructions

1. Preheat and prepare. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Melt the 3 tablespoons of butter in a 9-inch round cake pan either in the oven or on the stovetop over low heat. Swirl to coat the bottom evenly.
2. Build the topping. Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the melted butter in the pan. Arrange the sliced rhubarb in a single, snug layer over the brown sugar. Set aside.
3. Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
4. Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
5. Add eggs and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract.
6. Combine wet and dry. Reduce mixer speed to low. Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk (beginning and ending with flour), mixing just until combined after each addition. Do not overmix.
7. Pour and bake. Gently spread the batter over the rhubarb layer in the pan, smoothing the top with a spatula. Bake for 42—47 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is golden.
8. Flip and cool. Let the cake cool in the pan for exactly 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge, then invert onto a serving plate. Leave the pan in place for one minute before lifting it away. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 325 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 15g | Carbs: 45g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 185mg