Almond Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Rhubarb was on sale at the grocery store this week, so I picked some up. I have only baked with it once before when I made a pie, and since that was a success I wanted to try something different. I found a recipe on allrecipes, and made some changes based on the comments. I plan to bring one of these to Mother's Day lunch tomorrow, and the other to work on Monday. Josh and I shared an early piece - and it was really good!!!Almond Rhubarb Coffee Cake
adapted from allrecipes

Cake:
1 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
2/3 c. vegetable oil (normally I would sub applesauce, but didn't this time)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup milk (I used skim)
3 c. rhubarb, chopped

Topping:
1/3 cup white sugar
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/4 cup sliced almonds

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9 inch round pans.
2. In a large bowl, beat brown sugar, oil, egg, vanilla and almond extract together until smooth. Combine flour, salt and baking soda; add to sugar mixture alternately with milk. Beat until smooth. Stir in rhubarb. Pour into prepared pans.
3. In a small bowl, combine white sugar, cinnamon, and butter. Stir in 1/4 cup almonds. Sprinkle topping over batter (using your fingers is easiest)
4. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cake tests done. REVIEW:
I was really happy with all of the changes I made to this recipes, especially increasing the amount of rhubarb and adding the almond extract! Rhubarb is quite tart, but it works so well in sweet cakes and pies to balance out the sweetness. Next time, I think I will try reducing the brown sugar a little, to about 1 1/4 c, since I still thought this was a tad to sweet and want the tartness of the rhubarb to come through a little more. It was also a little too crumbly, reducing the sugar might help with that (this could be caused by the extra rhubarb I used). I really liked how this made 2 9" cakes - you can certainly halve the recipe if you don't need quite so much food.