One of my favorite summertime memories as a child was my mom’s rhubarb crisp … she called it “Royal Rhubarb Crisp” … and we felt royal when we ate it. It had that lovely tart-sweet taste with a little bit of brown sugar crunch on the top, but I think it was the combination of mandarin oranges and rhubarb that made it so special.
It’s so simple to make but you can only make it in rhubarb season … UNLESS you freeze some rhubarb so that when, in the wintertime when the world is white and you are starved for a taste of summer, you can pull out some rhubarb from the freezer and make this and remember the color and taste and sound of summer …
Royal Rhubarb Crisp
I like to increase the amount of fruit, increase the spices, and decrease the amount of sugar whenever I can. It makes things so much healthier, and then you get to savor the taste of nature. Usually I cut the amount of fat too, but in a crisp you need the butter in the topping. This still turns out to be a very healthy dish with less than 30% of the calories from fat.
Ingredients:
- 4- 5 cups chopped rhubarb (frozen works well too!)
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
- 1 1/2 t. good quality vanilla
- 1 (11-oz.) can mandarin oranges in light syrup, drained
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup quick-cooking oatmeal
- 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 cup cold butter
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a medium bowl toss the rhubarb, sugar and tapioca. Let stand for 15 minutes, tossing twice.
- Pour into a lightly greased square 9×9 or 8×8 baking pan and top with the mandarine segments.
- In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, oats, flour, salt, cinnamon and ginger. Mix well.
- Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- Sprinkle the topping evenly over the rhubarb mixture.
- Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
This recipe was shared at Katherine Martinelli’s Easter Blog Hop.
7 comments
Looks delicious. Interesting combo with the mandarin oranges and rhubarb. Gonna have to give this one a try. Thanks for sharing it!!
Thank you Helena! I love your recipes btw. 🙂
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Oh My Stars How Lovely! Thank you so much for sharing on Thursday’s Treasures Sweetie! <3 and Hugs!
[…] on the Internet for some ideas, and then I started playing … the first thing I made was Royal Rhubarb Crisp, my very favorite thing that Mom used to make for us when we were kids. Then I made this sauce with […]
The rhubarb will still be a few weeks before it’s ready here, but I’m absolutely going to try this. I enjoy mandarin oranges but never thought of combining the two. Sounds interesting. Thank you for sharing this with us.
They work marvelously together! I’m so glad you’re going to try it 🙂