Rhubarb Meringue Squares

On our recent trip to Sweden, I obtained a nice batch of recipes that my Mum had collected from various magazines as she thought I'd like them. One of them was themed on rhubarbs and as there are still a few stalks left, I decided to make this for Father's Day, as we were all getting together to celebrate at the large house of my Brother-in-law Roger.

The photos accompanying the recipe leaflet looked really pretty and it's a tray bake, so very good for a large crowd.

Ingredients

Short pastry
200 g unsalted butter, cold
4 dl plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 dl icing sugar
1 egg yolk
Butter for greasing

Filling
10 dl rhubarbs diced to 1 cm
1 tbsp potato flour

Meringue
5 egg whites at room temperature
2 ½ dl granulated sugar
2 dl ground almonds
¾ dl custard powder (not instant)

Decoration
almond flakes

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C (non-fan).
2. Dice the butter. Mix together the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl.
3. Place all pastry ingredients together and pinch together quickly into a smooth dough. Flatten it and wrap tightly in cling film, then chill for at least 30 minutes.
4. Butter a deep baking pan of about 30 x 40 cm size.
5. Roll the pastry to ½ cm thickness and place in the bottom of the pan, do not cover the sides.
6. Blind bake the base for about 10 minutes until it goes pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 175 °C.
7. Stir together the rhubarbs and potato flour to get them well coated.
8. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks, then slowly add the sugar to form the meringue.
9. In a separate bowl, stir together the ground almonds and custard powder together, then gently fold into the meringue.
10. Spread the rhubarbs across the shortbread base, then cover with the almond meringue and sprinkle almond flakes on top.
11. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes until the meringue and almonds get a nice colour, then remove and let cool a little in the tin.
12. Cut into squares and serve on the same day.

The recipe was unfortunately mis-matched in the amounts of the different parts, and I made the mistake of following it, rather than using my sense. I really should trust my gut feeling more, mostly they're right. So I used a smaller sized baking tray and had a shortbread base that was way too thick. I also felt I could have had more rhubarbs for that size tray. The meringue was also quite a lot - perhaps using large eggs resulted in this. Still I had to bake the cake for 45 minutes, but it did look lovely when it was ready.

I covered the baking tray well with cling film, ready to take along to the family get-together and of course we forgot it, remembering only when we'd reached our destination. Very sad and even sadder to find the meringue had gone soggy the next day when we came home.

But it's a very nice combination, I just need to make sure that the base is thin and use more rhubarbs and perhaps use less meringue. I've tried to adjust the amounts in the ingredients' list above, but it is yet to be tried out.