Rhubarb Mascarpone Bites and Leftover Muffins

Once upon a time, I had a lot of rhubarb and surprisingly even mascarpone - yeah, yeah, I should switch to a different type of cheese and I really do use other types as well but mascarpone makes everything fancier. So feel free to substitute all the mascarpone in my recipes for a different cheese because I've certainly tried and the results were satisfactory. 

You'll need:

dough

•  3 3/4 cups flour
• 1 1/2 table spoon sugar
• 1 1/2 table spoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups cold butter
• 1 cup buttermilk

cheese filling

• 1 cup mascarpone
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 yolk
• 1 tea spoons lemon juice
• zest from 1 lemon

rhubarb filling

•  2 big rhubarb stalks (about 400g)
• 1/3 cup sugar

assembling 

• 1 egg
• 1 table spoon water
• sugar

1) Spill all the dry batter ingredients into a food processor bowl and pulse to mix them. Cut the butter into smaller pieces and pulse again in the processor till it is very small but still visible. Add the buttermilk last and pulse again till it is combined. Remove from the bowl and knead. Wrap it in foil and refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight.

2) Peel the rhubarb, chop it to pieces, put it in a pot with the sugar and cook for about 15 minutes on medium heat. Then turn the heat up and keep stirring till its very thick. That should take another 10 minutes or so. Let it cool down.

3) Combine all the cheese ingredients.

4) Remove the dough from the fridge and work with it on a floured surface. Cut it into desired shapes - for one piece you need two same shapes but there should be a hole in one of them. Take one, put it on a baking tray, smear it with beaten egg to which water was added, add a tea spoon of cheese and a teaspoon of rhubarb, cover it with the piece with the hole in it, gently press the sides. Smear it with the egg and sprinkle some granulated sugar on top.

5) Bake for about 20 minutes at 200°C.

And since I had a 1/2 cup of mascarpone mix and a 1/2 cup of rhubarb mix left, I decided to put it into muffins to make them moist. They turned out very yummy with the subtle sour note.

You'll need (18 muffins):

• 1/2 cup mascarpone mix from above
• 1/2 cup rhubarb from above
• 400g flour
• 12g baking powder
• 200g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 120ml sunflower oil
• 200ml milk
• as many chocolate chips as you want

 1) Just combine everything (adding the chocolate last) and bake at 180°C for about 25 minutes.