Rhubarb cake and most gorgeous sunset at the beach

Today is my first day back to work and it is quite a "hard" thing to do after three weeks of lovely vacation. Having vacations is always fun, you let go, can sleep in and do not generally worry about time. It all changes as soon as you are returning to work, hence I always need some adjustment time, basically to get back to the daily routine and schedule. We are still in Sweden and the weather gods are in our favor, which means we still can do some cool activities after my "working hours". My boys are still having vacation (from work and kindergarten) and will spending this week having plenty of father and son quality time, while I will be working.

To ease my first working day (for all three of us) I made a rhubarb blackberry cake, for a late afternoon coffee, which we would enjoy together. We decided to go to the beach after I finish my work, to enjoy the last summer days and do some crab fishing. Something new and super funny for Pablo. The concept is easy and you do not need much of the tools for this either... just couple of washing peg, knit leash, bucket and some frozen shrimps. Next you have to do is to tie the knit leash to the one side of the washing peg, pinch one shrimp with the washing peg and drop it into the water, holding the leash with your hands. With some luck the curious and hungry crabs starts to come out. They will get their claws on the shrimp and in this moment you pull out the washing peg having a funny crab hanging on the shrimp. Kids find this very funny, at first Pablo was very careful, not really knowing how to react... now he always make sure they will get enough shrimps thrown into the bucket so the crabs have enough to eat. After the crabs had enough to eat and Pablo enough time to observe them, they all will be released back into the ocean.

We stayed a bit longer at the beach to enjoy the gorgeous sunset and I made about 100 pictures to capture the beauty of it...

Rhubarb cake with meringue topping

• 5 eggs (put 3 egg whites aside)
• 150 g sugar
• 100 g butter (melted)
• 150 g flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• about 300 g fresh rhubarb
• 2 handful blackberries (fresh or frozen)
• 60 g sugar
• vanilla sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C. Skin the rhubarb and cut it in cubes. In a stand mixer beat together 3 egg yolks and 2 whole eggs with the sugar till double in size and pale in the color. Add melted butter and give it a steer. Sift in the flour and baking soda. Mix till all well combined. Pour the the batter into the baking pan. Top it with rhubarb and blackberries and bake for 25 minutes. Meanwhile, beat the egg white to a meringue (beat the egg whites till they start to foam, add slowly the sugar continue beating till the meringue builds stiff peaks and the sugar is dissolved). Top the pre-baked cake with meringue and bake it for another 15-20 minutes.

Try this cake with rhubarb only, different kind of berries, apples or plums. I promise you will love these combinations too.

Enjoy!