Rhubarb and Custard Muffins

As a child, I remember the most exciting thing about going to town with Mum was visiting the pick and mix. My eldest sister would always get pineapple rock, but I always chose rhubarb and custard sweets.  There's nothing quite as retro I find quite as nostalgic as sucking on one of these little boiled sweets today.

My love of these flavours has almost "matured" you could say as I now go absolutely crazy for rhubarb, I adore the stuff. And custard.. well, anyone who has ever sat in Lincoln College's hall with me at pudding when crumble is served with huge jugs of hot custard, will know that I can very easily eat the stuff by the spoonful. Custard is the food of the God's.

And what more could a rhubarb-loving custard fiend want other than these rhubarb and custard cupcakes?

I took these back to sunny sunny Oxford with me, and i'm pretty sure they were appreciated!

So happy to be back, even if it means no baking for a while...

The recipe is from BBC Good Food, and is as follows:

1 quantity Barney's roasted rhubarb (see recipe, below method)
250g pack butter , softened, plus extra for greasing
150g pot ready-made custard (not the chilled kind; I used Ambrosia)
250g self-raising flour
½ tsp baking powder
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g golden caster sugar
icing sugar , for dusting

"Barney's roasted rhubarb": Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Rinse 400g rhubarb and shake off excess water. Trim the ends, then cut into little-finger-size pieces. Put in a shallow dish or a baking tray, tip over 50g caster sugar, toss together, then shuffle rhubarb so it's in a single layer.

Cover with foil, then roast for 15 mins. Remove foil. Give everything a little shake, roast for 5 mins more or until tender and the juices are syrupy.

Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Line a muffin tin with cupcake cases.

Reserve 3 tbsp of the custard in a bowl. Beat the rest of the custard together with the butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and sugar until creamy and smooth.

Spoon a small tablespoon of the mixture into the cupcake cases. Add a piece of rhubarb, a blob of custard then another tablespoon of the mixture. Repeat. On top of each cupcake, place a small dollop of custard. 

Yep I forgot to take another picture once they were complete...

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, until risen and golden.

The custard on the top will go quite brown, but don't worry this doesn't mean they're burnt :)

For more summery recipes, see my passionfruit cake and strawberry jam cupcakes!