equilibrium in all its glory

The whole last week was very fruit and pudding affected. it all started the frozen rasperries that had to make way for ice cubes in our mini-icebox, so I made a rasperry crumble. while double-checking my recipe with nigella lawson’s crumble recipes her rhubarb crumble caught my gaze again. see, the gf doesn’t like rhubarb whereas I love it, but I thought what the heck, I’ll just make her something else then. so I bought some not-so-pink but otherwise good rhubarb and when the in-laws announced themselves last sunday afternoon I thought “well, I can’t serve them crumble, that’s an evening kinda pudding and not something you have for coffee.” So I rang up my dad and asked him what goes into his equilibrium cake, knowing it was easy and fast to make.

my father used to make this cake a lot in the summer when I was a kid, with all kinds of fruit. actually that was the only way one could make both of us eat any fruit at all. it’s called “gleichgewichtskuchen” in german gleichgewicht meaning equilibrium, balance. basically it means that you just have to weigh the eggs in their shells and all, and say they weigh 200g you then take that same amount of everything else. 200g sugar, 200g butter, 200g flour. NO baking powder, you’re just going to beat the egg whites separately – that makes for the fluffyness of the cake.

so beat the egg whites, then in another bowl beat the yolks with the butter and the sugar (i’m sure you can use a food processor for that, only I don’t own one) and then fold in the flour and the beaten egg whites with a spatula. you’ll end up with the yummiest of all doughs ever. I had to keep the gf from having a go at it and leaving nothing to bake with, so from now on I just make a little more than I need and leave it in the bowl and on the spatula for us to lick clean. the rest of the dough, the part that I actually want to bake i put on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and spread it evenly. this part is a bit of a bummer but I usually manage to get it smooth in the end.

line the dough with cut up fruit and into the oven it goes at about 200° C for about 20 to 30 minutes (depends on how done you want it). you can use rhubarb like I did or all kinds of stone fruit like apricot or nectarines, cherries, peaches, plums, my dad put grapes on it a couple of times in autumn, very yummy. just cut the smaller fruits in halfs and the bigger ones into slices. and leave the stones out of course. you can probably use apples and pears if you like, i guess that’s more “wintery” then.

so I made a rhubarb cake that even the gf and her father – who both claimed not to like rhubarb – enjoyed. if you use a fruit as sour as rhubarb you can put a little more sugar in the dough or sprinkle some sugar over the cake right before it goes into the oven. and don’t forget to peel the rhubarb of course or it could get ugly 😉

I used up what was left of the rhubarb in a crumble (which the gf liked as well!) later in the week, so I made a second batch of equilibrium cake yesterday with peaches. let me tell you this: don’t use whole flour. I had to use it up, it had been standing there in the cupboard forever and the cake’s not bad at all, but it’s just not as good as it is with white wheat flour. and that’s also why it is a little darker in the pictures, so don’t worry if yours actually looks a little lighter.

OK then, so that was our sweet week 🙂
Tell me in the comments about what fruits YOU used if you happened to try out this recipe or tell me about your favourite summer baking recipes!