You can bake that s#&%: Leftover cake
Ideas and a boozy trifle recipe from Tamar Adler
It’s a rare back-to-back edition of You can bake that s#$%, because after a month of nonstop cake, we must contemplate the cake afterlife.
I know, I know. I can hear you asking: What kind of person has leftover cake? And look, I never meant to. Being a dessert vacuum is a core part of my identity.
But sign up to make your first-ever wedding cake, as I did a couple months ago, and you’ll wind up with leftovers from a-million-and-one practice rounds: the flavor experiments, the texture trials, and the stability tests. (Tiered cakes are as much a feat of engineering as they are of baking.)
Whatever your reason for excess slices, if you have extra—or better yet, stale—cake, you have the building blocks for easy desserts worthy of couch snacking or a low-effort dinner party.
A few cake afterlives
Turn sturdy cakes, like loaf cake, into cake toast: If you have uneaten loaf cake, perhaps the sky has fallen and pigs are flying (difficult, but not impossible, in the absence of sky). But it’s still your lucky day, because cake toast—an idea from A Whisk and a Spoon—awaits. Cut slices and pop in the toaster, leaning further into the natural drying process. Slather with butter and jam. Live.
Turn any cake into cake-crumb flour: Anything kind-of dry can be flour if you try hard enough. Blitz leftover cake pieces (sans frosting) into fine crumbs and use in fudgy brownies, or in place of all-purpose flour in muffins or coffee cake (up to a quarter of the total flour amount).
Turn any cake into trifle: To make trifle is to enter a lifelong love affair with leftover cake. Requiring just stale cake pieces, booze, and something creamy, it’s a logical follow to girl dinner and vaguely resembles geological strata. Eat your science education on the couch or serve to friends.
’s trifle recipe in The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z got me on the trifle train, and she’s kindly sharing it with us below. It’ll beckon you aboard too, with a boozy little wave.Recipe: Tamar Adler’s tipsy trifle
Reprinted with permission from The Everlasting Meal Cookbook, which I’ve bought three copies of so far this year as gifts.
¾ cup heavy cream, 2 tbsp fresh ricotta cheese, 2 cups cubed cake (no frosting or filling), ½ cup best possible dessert wine (Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, or Sauternes, or something similar).
In a chilled bowl, whip the cream and ricotta together to just past soft peaks. In a glass bowl, make layers in this order: one-third of the cake cubes, one-third amount of the wine drizzled over the cake, one-third of the whipped cream. Repeat this layering a second time. Make a final layer with the remaining cake and final drizzle of wine. Reserve the rest of the cream. Cover and refrigerate or place in the freezer for 3 hr. Serve cold, top with the reserved whipped cream.
The source of my leftovers
The wedding cake, I’m delighted to report, was a hit. I made it Saturday for dear friends I met at Le Cordon Bleu Paris’s pastry program. They got married in California, so I filled the cake with regional fruits: figs, plums, a raspberry-pluot compote, and a blueberry-sumac compote. There were no leftovers to be found, and this time, I’m ok with that.