Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Wide, heavy-bottomed saucepan with a lid
• •Sieve and bowl
• •Large mixing bowl
• •Whisk (balloon or electric)
• •Four glasses or small serving bowls

Instructions

1. 1

   Stew the rhubarb

   Put the rhubarb in a wide saucepan with the caster sugar, the strip of orange peel, and the split vanilla pod with its seeds scraped in. No water. The rhubarb has plenty of its own. Set it over a low heat and put the lid on. Let it sit there, barely bubbling, for eight to ten minutes. Give the pan a gentle shake now and then rather than stirring, which breaks the pieces up. You want the rhubarb to slump and soften but still hold some shape, and the juice to come out a saturated, almost unreasonable pink.

   Forced rhubarb is the candy-pink stuff grown in dark sheds in Yorkshire from January through March. If all you can find is the thicker green-and-red outdoor rhubarb, it will taste just as good but the colour will be muddier. Cook it the same way and don't apologise for it.
2. 2

   Cool and separate

   Take the pan off the heat and let the rhubarb cool in its own juice. Fish out the orange peel and the vanilla pod. Tip the fruit into a sieve set over a bowl so the juice drains away from the pulp. Keep both. Taste the fruit. If it needs more sugar, stir a little in now while it's still warm enough to dissolve. Taste the juice too. It should be sharp and fragrant and dangerously drinkable.

3. 3

   Reduce the juice

   Pour the drained rhubarb juice back into the pan and simmer it over a medium heat until it has thickened to a loose syrup. Three or four minutes. It should coat the back of a spoon and taste more concentrated than before. Set it aside to cool completely. This is the ribbon of colour that will thread through the cream.

4. 4

   Whip the cream

   Pour the chilled cream into a wide bowl with the icing sugar and the splash of ginger wine or elderflower, if using. Whip, by hand if you have the patience, until it holds soft floppy peaks. Not stiff. You're looking for something that falls from the whisk in slow folds, not something that stands up in points. Stiff cream in a fool is a small tragedy.

   Cold cream whips faster and holds better. If the kitchen is warm, sit the bowl on ice for a few minutes before you start.
5. 5

   Ripple and serve

   Fold about two thirds of the stewed rhubarb through the cream in long, lazy strokes. You're not mixing. You're marbling. Stop while there are still distinct streaks of white and pink, the kind that make you want to reach for a spoon straight away. Divide between four glasses or small bowls. Top each with the remaining rhubarb and a drizzle of the reduced syrup. A shortbread on the side, if you've got one. Eat straight away, or let them sit in the fridge for half an hour to firm up. Either is right.

Chef Tips

• •Forced rhubarb has a season, roughly January through March, and it's worth cooking to that calendar. Outside those months you can make this with outdoor rhubarb and it will still be delicious, just darker in colour and a shade more assertive. Don't let anyone tell you it isn't a proper fool because it's ruby instead of pink.
• •The orange peel and vanilla are quiet background notes, not loud flavours. You should barely taste them on their own. What they do is round off rhubarb's sharp edges so it plays nicely with the cream. Leave either out and the fool will still work, but together they do something worth having.
• •A fool is best eaten the day it's made. It will sit in the fridge for a few hours without complaint, but after that the fruit starts to weep into the cream and the ribbons blur. If you need to get ahead, stew the rhubarb a day or two in advance and whip the cream just before serving.
• •Serve it in something pretty. Not because this is a fussy dessert, it isn't, but because pink and white in a clear glass is one of the quieter pleasures of spring cooking. A small wine glass, an old tumbler, a little glass bowl from a charity shop. Whatever you've got.

Advance Preparation

• •The stewed rhubarb can be made up to three days ahead and kept in the fridge in a covered bowl. Bring it back to room temperature before folding through the cream so it doesn't chill the cream and seize it up.
• •The reduced syrup also keeps for a week in the fridge and is excellent stirred into prosecco, poured over ice cream, or spooned onto porridge on a grey morning.
• •Whip the cream and assemble the fools on the day you want to serve them. An hour in the fridge before eating is fine; much longer and the fruit starts to bleed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 230g)