Even The Most Dried-Out Cake Can Be Useful In Your Next Dessert

For better or worse, most of us have been face-to-face with a dried-out cake. Whether your fruit cake sat out too long on the counter, or your attempts at making a decadent, moist chocolate cake turned into a parched mishap due to omitting sufficient liquid ingredients, don't sweat it. Instead, see your dried-out pound cake or dark chocolate bundt as a happy accident — one that's perfectly useful in your next dessert. Cakes that come out of the oven lacking in moisture or those that have staled on the countertop can be repurposed in a variety of other sweet treat applications, from cake pops and pie crust to cake-studded milkshakes.

To give a dried-out cake new life, there's a wide variety of reimagined recipes at your fingertips. You can save and crush dry cake crumbs as a sand-like decorative topping for cupcakes or cake. Or dry out stale cake crumbs further by baking them in the oven, then blend them with butter to make a pie crust — like you would prepare a crust with crushed graham crackers. If you're working with dried-out cake chunks, these are the perfect mix-ins for brownie batter, since the cake will pick up moisture as the fudgey dessert bakes. You can also blend dry or leftover cake chunks as a topping for ice cream, gelato, or milkshakes. Ice cream will soften the cake as it melts, rehydrating the cake and creating the perfect textural contrast with the creamy dessert.

When in doubt, to give a stale or dried-out cake new life, take a page from your favorite soaked cakes and desserts. Think: tres leches cake or tiramisu. Instead of throwing out that dry strawberry sheet cake layer, poke some holds in it with a fork and rehydrate the cake with a mixture of whole, evaporated, and condensed milk. Apply a syrupy sugar glaze to dried-out vanilla cake, or brush it with coffee to give it more moisture. 

Salvage yellow cake by giving it the bread pudding treatment — soaking it in a mixture of custard, dried fruit, and nuts, and baking it in the oven until cooked through and velvety. Similarly, you can cut dry pound cake into thick strips, soak it in eggy custard, and fry it on a griddle like French toast. The result will be a delicious reimagined breakfast treat. You can even hydrate dry cake by mixing it with icing or melting chocolate to make moist cake pops or truffles. 

So, don't let cake scraps go to waste, even if you are working with a desiccated or stale bake. To use dry cake pieces, crumbs, or whole cakes in a later baking project, you can place them in an airtight container in the freezer to keep them from drying out further. Then, when you want to reclaim the stale cake, thaw it in the fridge and use it to make a variety of other desserts. The sky's the limit.