Rhubarb Cream Pie with Almond Crumb Crust Recipe

When I think of spring, I think of fresh wild asparagus, daffodils and tulips, and rhubarb. I don’t know why I think of rhubarb, but I do. I know that there were two hills of rhubarb growing way in the back of the farm behind the chicken coop and the asparagus beds, to the left of the orchard that never really bore fruit.

In my own personal mythology I can’t remember my mother ever making anything with rhubarb. Maybe she made a pie, but it doesn’t stand out in my memory. But I have this obsession, every spring, to make a rhubarb pie. So I watch for it at my local supermarkets. Sometimes they don’t have it. Other times the stalks are just too green and I know there won’t be much taste or the taste will be too bitter. But sometimes I get lucky and I find a decent batch of rhubarb, not as good as fresh-picked, but it will do when you have the obsession.

In 1974, after graduating from the University of Michigan, I left for Florida in January in a snowstorm, and never looked back. Somewhere in the three years I spent in Naples, Florida, I acquired a cookbook titled “A Treasury of Great Republican Recipes” compiled and edited by The Women’s Republican Club of Greater Naples, published in 1970. The recipes included Mrs. Richard M. Nixon’s Barbecued Chicken Sauce and Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Sugar Cookies, but the only one that caught my eye was Mrs. John Kyl’s (Wife of U.S. Representative Kyl of Iowa) Rhubarb Cream Pie.

It isn’t really a cream pie, more custard than cream. And some people don’t care for it because of the custard, expecting a pie more like cherry or strawberry that is only fruit. But for me, when the rhubarb is good, and the sweetness of the custard melds just right with the tartness of the rhubarb, it is nirvana. I think of spring and dream of new beginnings and fresh starts, and the scent of daffodils and tulips.