I am a complete sucker for both alliteration and rhubarb, so when I saw this old recipe card I knew I had to make it! Rosy Red Rhubarb Cake — the name just sounded cheerful and fun and I’m always looking for more ways to use rhubarb and celebrate its short season. (Though for this one, I used some of my freezer stash!) This is an easy cake to make and its bright color is almost as delightful as the flavor.

This card came to me through the Recipe Tin Project, which is a project where I cook my way through an old recipe tin full of vintage recipes. But you might have already guessed that. It’s chock full of old recipe cards, most of which seem to be from the ’60s and ’70s, though some are older. I love food history, and the idea is to breathe new life into these recipes from the past and maybe learn a technique or two from them along the way. The recipes come from different people with different handwriting; some have sweet illustrations while others are on plain (often smudged and stained) index cards.

This card has blue edging and a cute rolling pin design and comes from the ‘recipe file of Lil Haugen,’ though it says “Dot’s” in the corner, so possibly was jotted down from a friend of Lil’s. The instructions are a bit abbreviated but the cake is simple enough that it was easy to figure out. (I’ve run across cards with no instructions at all except “mix and bake”!)

What Ingredients Do You Need for Rosy Red Rhubarb Cake?

You’ll need:

• Rhubarb. 6 cups!
• Strawberry jello.
• Shortening.
• Eggs.
• Milk.
• Butter. (Yes, both.)
• Brown and white sugar.
• Flour. Baking powder. Salt.

How Do You Make Rosy Red Rhubarb Cake?

You might see that call for Jello and assume you mix it up and pour it over the cake. (I assumed it was a poke cake of some sort!) But that’s not quite it. Rather, you mix together the dry ingredients and the brown sugar, then cut in shortening before you mix in the milk. It’s a pretty thick mixture that you’ll press into the bottom of a baking pan. (A big ol’ 9×13. Which is good, you’ll want a lot of this cake.)

Then, you top it with the strawberry Jello, which the card describes as “strawberry gelatin.” (Maybe there were more available brands a few decades ago! I could only find Jello.) You don’t prepare it in any way, you just sprinkle the powder over the top.

The last step is to mix together a streusel topping — the butter, flour, and white sugar — and crumble that over the Jello and rhubarb. And then you bake.

The end result is really, really delicious. It doesn’t taste in any way like “jello.” The jello only sweetens the rhubarb below and brightens the color. The final flavor is sweet and tart and buttery and tastes of delicious bright rhubarb. The cake is soft and moist with the slightest crunch from the streusel topping.

I would call this Recipe Tin Project entry an absolute homerun! This is one I’ll be making year after year.