Rhubarb Dump Cake

After you’ve given this recipe a try, the last thing you are going to want to do is dump it! Rhubarb dump cake is slightly tart, tangy, sweet, and crunchy. In every single mouthful. Rhubarb isn’t so great raw, but it goes to a whole new level when stewed down into a delicious dessert. Today we are going to look at home to make this delightful after-dinner treat. We’ll even show you a few hints, tips, and alternatives so you can make it with different ingredients. 

What is Dump Cake?

The clue is in the name. 

Dump cake is a sort of hybrid. Part cake, part cobbler. The ‘dump’ part should actually give you a clue about how easy it is to make. Essentially, it’s all about throwing or ‘dumping’ your ingredients into a baking dish.

Yes, it really is that simple. 

How to Make Rhubarb Dump Cake

Listen.

We need to get something cleared up right away. This is a little bit of a cheat recipe.

Why?

If you are anything like us, you’ll know how busy life can be. We haven’t always got time to be messing about with eggs and flour making cake batter. We were trying to think of a way to make things quicker and much easier.

And…

We decided that pre-made store-bought yellow cake mix would do the trick admirably. This saves so much time and effort. If you want to be all posh, you can make a cake batter, but we think this tastes practically identical to the real thing. 

We start by greasing a baking dish with cooking spray. We then add a thick layer of chopped-up rhubarb. Don’t worry about it looking a bit bulky. The vast majority of rhubarb’s structure is made up of water. As it cooks, it breaks down and turns all mushy, so there’ll be plenty of room by the time you come to serve it.

We then top the rhubarb with a decent amount of sugar and the yellow cake mix. 

Now, you might be thinking, this all sounds a bit dry… And, you’d be right. We want our dump cake to be all juicy and tasty, so we add a little water, along with some melted butter, to really enrichen it. 

The next step after we have ‘dumped’ our ingredients is to bake our rhubarb cake. We find around 40 minutes in a hot oven is easily enough to get all of those ingredients stewing away and the top nice and brown.

From there, we serve thick spoonfuls along with a healthy dollop (yeah, right) of cool vanilla ice cream. The hot and the cold works so well together.

Tips and Tricks

• You can use fresh rhubarb, or if you have any leftovers from the fall, you can also use frozen. If you do opt for frozen, be sure to add another 10 minutes to the cooking time to give it a chance to thaw out.

• It is vitally important that you follow the recipe. Whatever you do, don’t stir the mixture once you have added your water and melted butter, or you will end up with a clumpy mess that looks nothing like a rhubarb dump cake.

• If you are trying to be healthy, you can leave the butter out, but be sure to add an extra 1/3 of a cup of water. 

• We use a large amount of white sugar in this recipe. However, for a really nice treat, try using soft brown sugar instead. This gives the dish a little hint of toffee flavor.

• This recipe is superb for using up all sorts of leftover fruit. One of our favorite additions is the inclusion of a couple of ripe bananas. The browner, the better!

• If you have any other crunchy fruit left over, now is the time to use it. We’ve tried this recipe with apples, pears, and even chunks of pineapple. All of them turned out perfectly!

• Half of the fun of this dish is what you serve it with. We find ice cold ice cream makes a really nice contrast with the piping hot rhubarb. Other options could include freshly whipped cream or a nice pale yellow egg custard.

• If rhubarb is a little too tart for your taste, here’s a great trick to sweeten it up and enhance all of those yummy fruit flavors. Add a few spoonfuls of strawberry jelly. You also get lots of those nice crunchy seeds.

Conclusion

We’ve been making dump cake for years, but when we discovered that you could use a yellow cake mix, it was a game-changer! Our rhubarb dump cake recipe is super simple, quick to make, and uses only 6 ingredients. It doesn’t get much better than that. What fruit do you like to use? Let us know in the comments below.