Orchard Training Homeschool Cookery Club - Upside-down Rhubarb Cheesecake

Thanks to the Homeschool Garden Club we have had our first harvest in and we have been looking at recipes to use the rhubarb. Our lesson started with it raining quite hard oust side, so we set about making our last ingredient - ginger pebbles.

I have to say we made a whole lot more than what you see here. However, a lot of them were "testers" just to see if we liked the ginger pebbles.

In our lesson we learnt how to choose the best stems and how to pick from the base taking the heel of the stem with the stalk.

We learnt why it was easier to chop the leaves off in the garden and not bring the

whole lot in and then the leaves back out to the compost bin. we set up a little station just by the compost bins. Some knife skills taught here.

They washed the stems, once we all made it back into the kitchen, and learnt how to de-string the rhubarb. At the start of the season, the rhubarb is tender and there is not too much string to the stems. However, they learnt how to do it all the same. The learners then prepped the rhubarb for poaching the the oven until the slices were cooked but not disintegrating.

Once the rhubarb was poached, we put the rhubarb at the bottom of ramekin dishes. Not everyone was convinced they would like rhubarb cheese cake so instead of making one big 12 portion cheese cake we are making smaller individual taster cheesecakes as samplers.

They then whipped up the cheese cake mixture, learning in the process another knife skill - chopping the pistachios finely.

Topping the rhubarb came next - and yes it was was hard as making sure we had enough ginger pebbles - as it was to ensure we had enough cheese cake mixture left. Because the nervous of rhubarb learners wanted to check if they liked the mixture better before or after the puree rhubarb was added. Our cookery lessons are part of our Design and Technology program so learning how to cook is important, learning how to adjust the recipe if you are not keen on one ingredient is also important.

Happy, we all liked the rhubarb and the pistachio mixture and we were able to practice our knife skills again chopping up the ginger pebbles for the topping.

Now a strange thing happened next. When we were about to make the biscuit crumb base - somebody noticed we were going to add more butter to the recipe and they suggested as we are putting it on top and the biscuits were really yummy already, they could save themselves some work by not making a biscuit base but simply add the chopped up ginger pebbles on top.

We made an upside-down rhubarb cheesecake, which everyone was happy with.

If you would to join the Orchard Training Homeschool Cookery Club you will need to check out the instructions in you support materials and sign up for the event.