Hello strangers! You won’t believe how happy I am to be able to finally bring you a brand new recipe, after almost 2 weeks of battling the dreaded virus! And before you ask, I have not been tested as there are no tests available to the general public here in the UK, but I am 99% sure that was it. It is also just as contagious as you would expect from something capable of wiping the entire world out – Duncan got it too despite us taking all the necessary precautions. However, I am happy to report that we are both well again and taking full advantage of the this glorious spring sunshine by swinging in my favourite hammock, reading, patting our cat and eating a prolific amount of sweet baked goods 😛 .
The trouble with the lockdown, apart from the obvious, is that it really isn’t that good for your waistline. I don’t know about you but I feel compelled to bake all the time and due to the nature of my job our house is constantly crammed with baked goods of all sorts. It made me realise how grateful I am to Duncan’s workmates who tended to help us eat through all the stuff my sugar obsessed brain comes up with. I really miss being able to give things away. Today’s recipe is not a traditional hot cross bun or a cinnamon bun, but still very Easter-worthy, in my opinion. I made a bunch of swirly buns, jam-packed with deliciously tart pink rhubarb and sweet stem ginger. They are sweet, tart and lightly spiced at the same time, really fruity and fresh and crowned with a fluorescent pink rhubarb icing. I happen to think that it’s a perfect Spring bun and I hope you will too! What inspired me to create these is the ludicrously pink forced rhubarb that appears to be sitting idle on my local shop’s shelves. While people are going crazy for pasta, rice and flour, no one seems to be bothered much about rhubarb so I had to pounce on it and make something with it before the season comes to an end. What I love about these (apart from the taste, of course) is their gorgeous, almost too good to be true, colour. It is kind of funny as I have always been the kind of girl who hates pink, ever since I was little. It could be that because being male and tough definitely had more of a currency in my house and since I certainly wasn’t tough, I decided, early on, that pink is too girly and I hate it. I hated it for years despite all my girl friends going crazy for it. It used to annoy me when manufacturers would insist on making female versions of products (including things like running shoes and watches) exclusively pink. It still does, to be honest and I sometimes tend to buy the male version instead but I am slowly getting less combative about that colour in general. I would not go as far as wearing it, that’s for sure, but I do embrace it in nature, art, interior design. And I certainly embrace it in these buns as it makes them uniquely beautiful and an object of envy among all the sad brown cinnamon buns out there 😉 .
500 g / 17.5 oz fresh pink rhubarb, divided 50 g / 4 tbsp sugar, stem ginger syrup or maple syrup 4-5 pieces of stem ginger in syrup, chopped very finely
GLAZE + (optional) ICING
1-2 tbsp maple syrup approx 70 g / ½ cup icing sugar
