GROW YOUR OWN BAKING INGREDIENTS

This month Rob Smith picks out some of his favourite baking fillers for those sweet-toothed growers among us

- Rob Smith

With supermarket prices continuing to skyrocket and shelves being empty more often, why not grow a few goodies to help create your favourite sweet treat? I’m thinking of those tasty ingredients we add to our biscuits, cakes, pies and crumbles to make them irresistible to family and friends.

RHUBARB CRUMBLE AND PIES

I’m a massive fan of rhubarb in my baking, from traditional crumble and pies to yoghurt and rhubarb cake and simple compotes to pour over ice cream. The problem I have with the rhubarb season is the fact it doesn’t last long enough, until now! While old favourites like ‘Timperley Early’ will produce armfuls of stalks for a couple of months before growth slows for summer dormancy, new varieties such as British-bred ‘Livingstone’ have been created to crop all the way through summer and into early autumn, giving months more harvest from just one plant.

My plants are grown in open-bottomed raised beds, but rhubarb is always best grown in the ground, preferably with added manure. This hungry plant is great to grow at the side of the compost heap where it will have access to more nutrients and can be happily left to grow there for years; after all, it’s one of the easiest perennial veg you can grow (yes it’s a vegetable, even though we treat it as a fruit).