Rhubarb Crumble Recipe

Rhubarb is the first produce in the garden to poke its head out of the snow after a long winter. While a few other signs of green life may be visible, it’s the emergence of rhubarb that truly signals that Spring is arriving.

The flavor of those first stalks of Spring need to be showcased. The preparation should be simple and the other ingredients should support without drawing attention. For me, the best way to serve new rhubarb is in Rhubarb Crumble, sometimes called Rhubarb Crunch.

The ingredient list for this recipe appears almost verbatim in church cookbooks throughout the Midwest. It can be found on the internet under titles that reference various people’s grandmas. It is time-tested and true. Any attempt to fancy it up will bring in flavors that just get in the way.

---

So many church cookbook recipes came from sources like Ladies Home Journal that it is almost impossible to say what the true origin of a popular old recipe really is. The fact that a recipe like this filters its way through so many local cultures so as to be enshrined in a church cookbook as a certain family’s favorite strikes me as being very democratic. A mass market publication may have been the source, but people, in effect, voted for what they liked and the recipe was adopted into a community through the localized social media influencers of their day working with the medium they had available – the local church cookbook.

This particular recipe was submitted by Mrs. Jerry Huettl in the Saints Peter and Paul’s Parish Cookbook in Mankato, Minnesota published in 1976 featuring artwork by Grades 4, 5, and 6 of the Saints Peter and Paul’s Grade School. I think their artwork is utterly charming.

---

Ingredients:

• 4 cups Rhubarb, cut into one-inch pieces

The Filling:

• 1 cup Granulated Sugar
• 2 tbsp. Corn Starch
• 1 cup Water
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract

The Crumble:

• 1 cup All-Purpose Flour
• ¾ cup Regular Rolled Oats
• 1 cup Brown Sugar
• 1 tsp. Cinnamon
• ½ cup Melted Butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F.

For the filling, combine 1 cup granulated sugar and 2 tbsp. cornstarch in a sauce pan, add 1 cup water and stir until smooth. Cook mixture over medium-high heat and bring to a boil while stirring constantly to avoid burning. Continue stirring while simmering for about two minutes until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat and stir in 1 tsp. vanilla extract.

For the crumble, combine 1 cup flour, ¾ cup rolled oats, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon and ½ cup melted butter.

Press half of the mixture into a two-quart baking dish.

Cover the base with the four cups of diced rhubarb. Pour the thickened filling mixture over the rhubarb.

Top with the remaining crumble mix.

Bake at 350° F. for 50-60 minutes.