We know what you’re thinking. Leftover cake, cookies and bread? Is there such a thing? Yes, it happens, even to the best of us.
Whether you’ve baked or been gifted too much food without enough mouths to eat it or you tried a new recipe or store-bought treat that was just “meh,” the extras can pile up.
Making use of those leftovers is not only thrifty and green, it can also be fun. Here are a few ideas for each type of baked good.
Bread
To simplify things, assume we’re talking about enriched breads, which typically include butter, eggs and/or sugar and are a staple of the holiday season. Common examples: brioche, challah, stollen and panettone. Pastries such as croissants are similar.
You’re probably already familiar with one of the more common ways to make use of plain croissants. That would be almond croissants, in which a nut paste is spread and baked into stale or day-old pastries. It got me thinking. Could you do the same thing with the often gifted, often underwhelming panettone? Answer: Yes. My colleague Daniela Galarza took the idea and ran with it, developing a recipe for Panettone Bostock, a variation on the common French pastry for using up old bread. Hers features an any-nut frangipane you can slather onto staled panettone, croissants, brioche or even white bread and top with your choice of nuts and fruit. (By the way, if you want the best panettone to eat out of hand, swing over to Daniela’s roundup of her favorite mail-order loaves.)
Extra panettone and cake are easily transformed into a trifle, in which layers of fruit, whipped cream, custard and any add-in of your choice, really, can mask — and improve! — even the most mediocre baked goods. Could you do it with fruit cake? Sure. Add some of your favorite liqueur, or even eggnog, for some holiday glam. See Cranberry and Custard Trifle, below, and Caramelized Blood Orange Tipsy Trifle for inspiration.
If you’re a pie baker, follow the lead of such experts as Dorie Greenspan and place a layer of breadcrumbs on top of the crust to prevent the dreaded soggy bottom. Dried works the best for soaking up excess liquid, so you can run your bread, ideally brioche or challah since they don’t have add-ins, through the food processor and then leave them on a sheet pan to stale or place briefly in a moderate oven to dry out. Freeze and use as needed.
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Staled or dried bread is a natural in a number of thrifty, satisfying dishes. French toast is a classic, though it works best with breads with a tighter rather than very open crumb (ditto the bostock). For a large-format option built for the oven, there’s always bread pudding. It can be made with layers of slices, but you open up your options if you decide to go with cubed bread, which you can dry out overnight or in the oven so that it better soaks up your custard made with eggs and milk, cream or half-and-half. Croissant bread pudding is absolutely a possibility, as in this Chocolate Bread Pudding that uses plain or almond varieties but works with brioche as well.
Share this articleShareEasy Apple Charlottes inspired by “Downton Abbey” share DNA with the aforementioned options, but you use pieces of bread soaked in an egg mixture to create a dome around a cooked apple filling.
Cake
Cake pops are always an option. Mix crumbled cake with your favorite homemade or canned frosting or jam and form into balls you can dip in melted chocolate. No sticks, no problem. Follow the lead of Christina Tosi of Milk Bar and make cake truffles. Here’s my primer on making them, too. And cake easily takes the place of cake doughnuts in Blueberry-Lime Doughnut Truffles and Nutella Doughnut Truffles.
Cake crumbs can be stashed in the freezer much as you would breadcrumbs. If you anticipate a glut of Easter candy creme eggs, a la Cadbury, you can emulate the brilliant Nadiya Hussain. In her book “Nadiya Bakes,” she coats frozen creme eggs in a mix of buttercream and cake crumbs, followed by a coating of blitzed cookies for a sweet riff on the classic savory Scotch egg. You’re welcome.
Cookies
Much like cake, cookies take well to being layered with whipped cream, in the form of icebox cakes. Let your creativity run wild as you build a creation that can feature your choice of nuts, preserves, booze, sprinkles, curd and chocolate (shaved or ganache). Check out this primer from dessert queen Jessie Sheehan.
Cookies broken down in the food processor make a great foundation for a press-in pie or tart crust when mixed with butter or sugar as needed. You can find more details on making a crumb crust from Jessie in her piece on no-bake pies.
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We’re of the opinion that any season is fit for ice cream, so go ahead and fold in pieces of cookies — bonus points if you use multiple types — into a homemade batch. Ditto cake, especially if you brush it with liqueur or a flavored syrup before breaking it into bite-size pieces.
Could you use leftover gingersnaps or spiced wafers such as speculoos to make your own cookie butter? You bet.
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