Ahh, rhubarb! This hardworking bundle of nature’s  goodness is often regarded as a fruit, but in fact it’s a vegetable.

But once you taste the fragrant rhubarb tea cake, an old favourite making a comeback, you won’t care if it’s  either. Just know that it produces large crops of red or green stalks that are high in vitamin C and K, plus potassium, calcium and fibre.

This tea cake is so good for you and is scented with rose water.

Place rhubarb, sugar and juice into a saucepan. Cook, covered until tender. 4-5 minutes.

Remove from heat. Stir in rose water. Cool. You’ll need one cup cooked rhubarb.

Line base of a 20cm ring tin with baking paper.

Using butter, lightly grease sides and centre piece.

Sift flour, stir in almond meal. Set aside.

Using a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Fold into creamy mixture the dry ingredients alternatively with milk to produce a soft dough.

Divide dough in half and drop spoonfuls into prepared tin. Using half the cold rhubarb spoon over dough. 

Repeat with remaining dough finishing with a rhubarb topping.

Bake at 180°C for 30-35 minutes. When cool (at least try hard to wait until it cools down a bit), then turn cake out onto a rack and dust with icing sugar.

Try using a ring tin because the cooked cake can be cut into wedges that can be evenly packed into a container for freezing. Wrap each wedge in cling film.

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Once a backyard stand-by, rhubarb makes a great simple dessert, believes author Jackie French AM.

“If you have a freezer full of last year's stewed apple and rhubarb, it’s one of those magic combinations, though plums and rhubarb stewed in orange juice with a touch of port can be extraordinarily delicious too,” she said.

“Rhubarb grows in full sun or lightly dappled shade – in very hot dry summers it does best with the dapples. It grows best very well fed indeed, but if you're not going to eat it often, or are away for a few weeks/months/decades it will survive with no care whatsoever unless covered by an invading blackberry clump or kikuyu.”