Strawberry Rhubarb Cake

Go into any grocery store at the moment and the first thing you see is California strawberries. Now, being from the Pacific Northwest I am pretty partial to our local strawberries. There is an amazing berry farm here called Spooners Berry Farm and we love there strawberries so much that we buy a ton and freeze them for use all year round. I still have a tub of them in the deep freezer in the garage! But they are not available until June.  But anyway, back to the California strawberries. There are on sale at the moment and I bought a four pounds for Easter. I washed them and topped them and sliced them. I am sure everyone already knows this but you can slice your strawberries with an egg slicer. It works great!! I sprinkled a little bit of sugar on them and divided them up into containers to freeze until Easter. I ran out of containers and still have a few cups of berries left. As I was putting the containers in the freezer I found some rhubarb that I got from a friends garden last summer that I had chopped up and frozen. I was pretty excited to actually have rhubarb and  strawberries available to me at the same time (of course at the time I had totally forgotten I had strawberries in the deep freeze! I should really make another inventory list, but that is a topic for another blog post!!) So I decided to make a cake that Jacob's cousin Ali made for us a few years ago which has been a hit with our family. It's a very interesting cake recipe and before Ali made it for us I never would have thought of combining these ingredients together. The original recipe doesn't call for strawberries but I thought it would be fun to switch things up a bit.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cake

1 cup diced rhubarb
2 cups sliced strawberries
2 tablespoons sugar
1 4 (four) oz strawberry jello packet
1/2 bag mini marshmallows
1 strawberry cake mix (yellow, white, cherry chip, or even chocolate would work too)
3 eggs
1 cup water
1/3 cup oil

grease a 9x13 pan and preheat your over to 325 F. In a bowl combine strawberries, rhubarb and sugar. pour mixture into pan. sprinkle strawberry jello powder evenly over berry mixture. layer marshmallows on top of jello powder.
In a large mixing bowl combine cake mix, eggs, water, and oil. beat on high with egg beaters or in stand mixer for 2 minutes or so. Pour cake batter over top of the marshmallows. bake for 35 minutes.

I know it sounds super sweet but the rhubarb really helps counter the sweetness. The marshmallows and the jello powder make this kind of gel that soaks up int to the cake so it's almost pudding like. I find the cake taste the best if you bake it in the evening and let it sit in the fridge overnight so the cake can soak up the yummy marshmallow  goodness!I have not experimented with any other substitutions other then adding the strawberries. you can always just add 3 cups rhubarb. It's really yummy and make enough cake to feed a crowd! I am pretty excited to share this recipe with you. Let me know what you think!