Jun. 28, 2021
Cooking In Season
Salad Meals to Beat the Heat
In this recipe round up, I have gathered my best and most delicious summer salad meal recipes in one post, for days when it’s too hot to cook!
May 25, 2011
Rhubarb Custard Bars
Rhubarb custard bars are the all-time most popular recipe on my blog, and for good reason. The tart rhubarb plays perfectly against the sweet buttery crust and smooth vanilla custard. To die for!
Rhubarb season just got even more delicious. All because of this great recipe.
Rhubarb Custard Bars are awesome: such a crisp nutty crust married to a sweet, smooth, sliceable custard, and filled to bursting with tart pieces of rhubarb. Excuse me while I drool.
I’d love to claim this recpe as my own. But, while I have tweaked it a little, original recipe honours must go to Ciara Dooley of Kildara Farms. She gave me this recipe almost 10 years ago and I have been using it ever since, a happy and delicious spring ritual. I love rhubarb crisp, too, but Rhubarb Custard Bars are something different and hand-pie-ish.
My kids call these “Rhubarb Pie Things” (Usage: “Mommy, can I have another Rhubarb Pie Thing? Please? I’ve only had two!”). I just call them extra yummy.
Rhubarb Custard Bars
Rhubarb custard bars are the all-time most popular recipe on my blog, and for good reason. The tart rhubarb plays perfectly against the sweet buttery crust and smooth vanilla custard. To die for!
Ingredients
Crust
1-1/4 cup (175 gm) all purpose flour
1/4 cup (35 gm) whole wheat flour (or use all purpose flour here)
½ cup (114 g) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
½ cup (100 g) white sugar
¼ tsp (1.5 g) salt
Topping
1½ cups (300 g) sugar
3 eggs
5 Tb (44 g) all purpose flour
2 tsp (10 ml) vanilla extract
¼ tsp (1.5 g) salt
¼ cup (60 ml) whipping cream
4 to 5 cups (approx 1½ lbs / 680 g) rhubarb, chopped small
Instructions
Crust
- Preheat oven to 375 F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9″ x 13″ (approx) metal or glass pan.
- In a large bowl combine all ingredients. Mix with your fingers until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Butter should be completely incorporated. You can use a food processor for this step, if you like.
- Press crumbs (not too too firmly, but firm enough) into the bottom of the prepared pan. Press a tiny bit up the sides of the pan as well. Place pan on lower-centre rack of the preheated oven. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes, until golden. Remove from oven and reduce oven heat to 350 F.
Topping
- While the crust is baking, mix the topping ingredients together.
- In a large bowl, mix the sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla, salt, and whipping cream, whisking well to eliminate lumps. Stir in the diced rhubarb.
- Once the crust comes out of the oven, pour the topping over it (the crust should still be warm). Return to the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, until custard no longer jiggles and toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.
- Let cool. Cut into bars. The first bar is hard to cut, but after that, they should be pretty easy to cut.
- Note: Plan to eat these bars up within two days. If you don’t think you can eat them that quickly, cut the recipe in half and bake it in an 8×8-inch square pan.
Another excellent recipe, Heidi!
Thank you, Carolyn!
Heidi, I made these today with rhubarb from the market. They are so delicious. Thanks for the recipe!
Awesome, Adrienne! I am so glad you like the recipe. It’s definitely one of my favourites.
I am going to make these tomorrow – they sound so good. I am converting most of my recipes to measurements in weights and would like to know if you have a reference/website you think is best for converting the flour, sugar and butter to grams.
Thanks!
Hi Diane, I’ll edit the post today to reflect grams! I have been trying to edit all my baking posts to weights, but I haven’t made it back this far yet 🙂 A good rule of thumb is 1 cup of all-purpose flour is 140 g; 1 cup of granulated sugar is 200 g; 1 cup of butter is 227 g
I cut 2 tbsp of sugar from the crust, and will reduce it to 1/4 cup sugar (by 50%) next batch. Other than that I LOVE this recipe. And I mean, it was really really good, just sweeter than I liked. I had a little extra rhubarb, so I tried making a bit of stewed rhubarb with ginger, orange zest and sugar. It was Fantastic, so I’ll try adding orange and ginger to my next custard bar. The cookie base was a really nice crunchy texture.
Ooh, good to know! I do find the recipe a bit sweet, but I have never tried reducing the sugar.
Just making a batch for a party. A family favourite for years! I knew you created this recipe but just finding your website today.
Thanks Mavis! I’m glad you found me
I refer to this recipe every May! A fav for sure
Yay! so glad it’s a favourite of yours 🙂
This recipe sounds so good but I don’t have fresh rhubarb! Can I use frozen then thawed rhubarb and if so should I drain it before using it?
Yes, you can use frozen rhubarb. I would use it straight from frozen, chopped small (you can chop while they are frozen or semi=frozen) and cook the bars for a little longer. The liquid from the rhubarb blends with the egg and sugar to make the custard, so if you drain off all the liquid, it might affect the flavour and texture. BUT that said, if you have thawed the rhubarb already, then drain off *some* of the liquid before using.