Using Castaway Food

No I’m not talking about dumpster diving although, hey, now that I think about it, that could be its own blog! I’m talking about when you are cooking or baking and are left with perfectly good ingredients. Like when you make pastry cream and have leftover egg whites. In this case, I had just finished making the Rhubarb Ginger Syrup I recently posted and the cooked rhubarb solids were left over. Having been cooked with sugar and ginger, they were flavorful and I stirred some into yogurt the next morning. But I got to thinking, there is enough here to use in a recipe….the mixture was soft and had the texture of a slightly chunky applesauce so I started thinking about quick breads and tea cakes that use applesauce and pumpkin purée. After some testing the Spiced Rhubarb Tea Cake recipe was born. The only thing is that when you make the syrup and press all the liquid out of the solids, all of the pretty pink color goes into the syrup! The rhubarb solids left behind are very dull in color. Not very pretty. But they are still filled with both flavor and moisture. As you can see in the pic above the tea cake is not pink in any way shape or form, but it has a lovely subtle fruit flavor, is very moist (freezes well) and is a great way to use up those solids. This is the kind of cake that goes perfectly with mid-afternoon coffee or tea.