cake scraps

I had a really exciting plan for a Valentine’s dessert: an extra-decadent chocolate cake, filled with peanut butter, sprinkled with cocoa powder. I was going to cut tiny slices and drizzle them with salty caramel sauce and we would all go back for seconds even though we were absolutely full. But, in my attempt to finish the cake before my sleepy roommate Morgan went to bed, I tried to divide a not-at-all-cool cake into layers, which is, you know, the wrong way to divide a cake into layers. At least it still tastes the same if it’s in a big crumbly pile on your counter, right?

Oh, it does. After staring at my broken dreams, er…cake, for a few moments while my roommates laughed at me, I threw some of the bigger chunks into jars, added peanut butter, more chunks, my salty caramel and whipped cream, and voila! Mini trifles that nobody could even finish. But that was the equivalent of maybe ¼ of the cake. So I still had 75% of an entire cake sitting in a tupperware on my counter. What to do, what to do?

While it’s totally acceptable, and highly advisable, to simply eat your cake scraps (be it from a cake mistake or just the trimmings from a cake that looks much more beautiful than mine did), you can turn them into all sorts of cakey treats. Plus, showing up to a birthday party with a cake and bourbon/rum cake balls is a serious power move.

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peanut butter tartlets

My aunties sent me a beautiful mini-heart muffin pan for Valentine’s Day, which I was very excited to use, but you can use mini tart pans or a muffin tin. This was the perfect amount for my 6 hearts, but doubling the recipe would probably work for a 9-inch tart pan (untested, don’t quote me).

crust:
1 cup cake crumbs
2 tbsp unsalted butter

filling:
¾ cup creamy peanut butter
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup powdered sugar
½ tsp vanilla

  1. Preheat oven to 350 °F.
  2. Put cake crumbs into a food processor and pulse until fine. Add butter and process until the butter is well mixed in. You’ll have a thick paste.
  3. Spray your pan of choice with cooking spray. I put strips of parchment paper in each mini heart to make it easier to pop the tarts out of the pan (and it looked kind of like arrows through the hearts which I thought was cute). Press about 2 tbsp of the cake mixture into the bottom of each cup.
  4. Bake the crusts for 12-15 minutes. Cool completely in pan.
  5. To make the filling, beat the peanut butter and cream cheese until well combined. Add the powdered sugar then the heavy cream. Mix in the vanilla.
  6. Fill each cup with peanut butter filling and smooth tops with an offset spatula. Chill until firm (I threw mine in the freezer). Carefully remove your tarts from pan and drizzle with that caramel sauce that was supposed to go on your cake.
  7. Keep refrigerated.

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bourbon balls

Because rum balls are for Christmas time, and there was already bourbon in the cake! What I love about bourbon/rum balls is that they are pretty hard to totally mess up. If you end up with too much liquid, add some more cake crumbs, pulverized oats, graham crackers or wafer cookies. Just keep tasting as you go (I know, it’s a tough job).

makes about 8 1-inch bourbon balls

1 ½ cups cake crumbs
1 tbsp caramel sauce (or peanut butter, nutella, etc.)
2 tbsp bourbon

  1. Pulse cake crumbs in a food processor until fine.
  2. With a spoon, or your hands, mix together crumbs, caramel and bourbon. Roll into balls.
  3. Roll bourbon balls in cocoa powder, powdered sugar or sprinkles. Chill.

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You can also put the crumbs in a food processor and use them to decorate a cake that you don’t drop! Keeping my leftover cup of crumbs in the freezer for a future birthday.