Rhubarb and Custard Cake with Caramelised Rhubarb

I have previously made a Rhubarb and Custard cake on this blog... this is the rematch. The first one didn't live up to my standards, mainly because I slightly sizzled it.
This cake was for the special One Show Cake Club which you can read all about here, so it had to be quite appealing but fairly easy to put together because I had to bake it another kitchen with limited equipment, compared to my own. I was struggling to think one up and was going to take a cake from the Good Food website but then I remembered I was in Yorkshire right bang in the middle of the forced rhubarb season, a vegetable that I love. So I decided to recreate the cake that I made last rhubarb season.

For this one I decided to omit the custard from the cake and make it into a frosting, I also used a 900g loaf tin this time instead of deep cake tin.

Rhubarb and Custard Cake with Caramelised Rhubarb
Ingredients
Cake
1 stick of rhubarb, washed and sliced into finger sized pieces
10g caster sugar
200g self raising flour
200g soft butter
200g caster sugar
4 eggs

Topping
200g full fat cream cheese
130g Icing sugar
100g Softened butter
4tbsp custard

Decoration
half a stick of rhubarb
100g caster sugar
20ml water

Method
Place the rhubarb into a roasting tin and sprinkle with sugar, bake for 15 mins at 200C, remove and allow to cool.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the eggs one at a time and beat well
Sift in the flour and beat until all combined and smooth
Layer a third into a lined loaf tin, flatten gently.
Layer some of the rhubarb into the tin.
Cover with a third more cake batter and then add the second rhubarb layer.
Use the rest of the cake batter to cover the top, flatten gently.
Bake for 60-70 mins (180C/160Cfan), until a skewer can be removed clean.
Remove from the tin and leave to cool.

Topping
Beat half the cheese with the butter and sugar until well combined.
Add the remaining cheese and custard and mix well.
Spread on top of the cake, the remainder can be served alongside.

Decoration
Slice up the rhubarb stick into very thin, finger length batons, try to keep the pink rhubarb colour on and cut away the white inner flesh.
Add the water and sugar to a pan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves and begins to boil.
Once it changes to a golden colour, remove from the heat and drizzle over the batons with a spoon.
Leave to set and cool.

Arrange how you like on the cake, the little bit of caramel not on the rhubarb can be used for decoration also.

Enjoy