It’s that time of year- the time of rhubarb and strawberry peak ripeness overlapping. The sweet of strawberries and the tart of rhubarb are a time-tested, palate pleasing combo that means the spring season is full and almost ready to transition to summer. Peach rhubarb is also a stellar combo later in the summer!! Considering Wisconsin food culture has a large overlap with Scandinavian food culture, it is no surprise both have a penchant for rhubarb desserts of all types… rhubarb tarts like this one, rhubarb pudding, etc. It is used much the way tart cherries are.

Rhubarb!! Although stems are tart and yummy, leaves are excessively high in oxalate, and rather bitter.

When I look up recipes for rhubarb dessert, though, it seems they tend to have almost as many cups of sugar as they do rhubarb. Gross; this is completely unnecessary and hides the flavors of the season under a mask of refined sugar. This simple recipe has no refined sugar- sweetnesss comes from Stevia or fruit. You can pick up a Stevia plant at Edgewater Home and Garden at this time of year. I love them; at the end of the season I bring my Stevia plant inside for winter baking. My plant did die, though, when I went on vacation…. I came back and harvested all the dry leaves though and use them to sweeten oatmeal or tea or anything else for which I would otherwise use sugar.

Ingredients

2 cups of chopped strawberries

2 cups of chopped rhubarb

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 oz dried apricots, diced (about a half cup)

3 stevia leaves, minced* (see note)

1/4 c orange juice

dusting of coconut sugar

Crust- 1/2 c dates, 1/2 c walnuts or pecans

* If you don’t have a Stevia plant in your yard, there are a few options for replacing this ingredient. 1. Powdered Stevia. If you have pure powdered Stevia, that stuff is powerful and a small dash (less than an eighth of a teaspoon) will flavor this whole recipe; it’s easy to use too much. Most Stevia powders have fillers, though, exactly for this reason. If you have Stevia in the Raw packets, 3 will work. If you have a watered down Stevia powder with fillers, most would sufficiently flavor the dish with 1.5 tsp. May have to flavor to taste, though …. this is definitely the wild card ingredient in this recipe, but Stevia is worth learning how to use to replace an unhealthy ingredient with a healthy one in a lot of recipes.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Combine all filling ingredients except coconut sugar. Put mixture into a greased 9 inch pie pan or glass (I used coconut oil; I would stick with either a flavorless oil like avocado or a nutty oil considering it is a dessert like coconut or pecan or hazelnut oil, etc.).

3. Dust with coconut sugar.

4. Combine nuts and dates in a food processor. Process on “high” until crumbly; this may take several minutes.

5. Sprinkle the date-nut crumble into the fruit filling.

6. Cover with aluminum foil and bake in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes. Uncover in the last 5-10 minutes to brown the topping (I left mine in the picture uncovered for too long thus the burned sections…)

7. Enjoy!

Totally ok to double the recipe and have more for later/freeze as well. This dessert didn’t raise my sugar appreciably when I ate a 3/4 cup serving.