This is one of those recipes that are not planned this way. I wanted to bake a cake. Well, my friend told me that I wanted to bake a cake. So I said yes before checking the shelves if I had all the ingredients. On Sunday, I started and soon realized that I neither had baking powder nor yeast. Great.

But fortunately we are not living in the middle ages anymore and there is wireless internet in the kitchen. So lets go to big G and search for a juicy cake recipe without yest or baking powder.

Et voilà! I am not the only one on this planet with this problem. I quickly found this brilliant recipe:

Weigh 4 eggs with the shell. Then get the same amount of flour, sugar and butter. Mix the whole eggs (without the shell, of course ) with the sugar until you get a fluffy mass. Mix this with the flour. You should get a nice liquid dough. Then mix this dough with the warm butter. I always let the butter melt in the oven at around 80°C, so I can mix it more easily. In the end the dough should be nice and heavy, wonder why…

Put it in the oven at 180°C for about 45 minutes. You should get a result like this. My cake doubled its size without yest or baking powder. Amazing!

Nice and golden!

Ok, now the rhubarbe. I cooked it down to a sort of jam with some sugar (the greener the rhubarbe, the more sugar you  need) and a vanilla bean. I know, it does not look like something you want to eat but it is delicious!

I know, I know...

Then put the rhubarbe jam on the cake.

Already looking better this way

Just a quick test to be sure...

Now we need the meringue. Mix 3 egg whites with some sugar (as there are already tons in the cake) until you get something like this.

Where is a spoon?

You need to make sure that the meringue is absolutely stiff. Best way to find out is:

Looking good!

Then it is time to build some mountains.

One spoon on the cake, one spoon for me

Be sure to make some little valleys and tops. This way it will look nicer when it’s finished.

The Himalaya in a cake pan.

Put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes until the cake looks like this.

Now I really need a spoon!

Nothing much left to do now. Slice it and serve it on a victorian plate of your choice.

Bon appétit!

I chose my latest catch from a garage sale, around 1890 . Any modern plate would work, too. Just wanted to show off a bit.