August 4, 2017 - 7:52am
Recycling crumb cake?
I have opened a new bakery, and turn over isn't quite high enough yet to get through all the pieces of the crumb cake before it starts to get too stale to sell. I tried freezing and thawing pieces as needed but I'm not happy at all about the quality. I'm only making a 1/2 sheet at the moment, but I may also just try to drop down to a 9x13 for the time being.
But other than eating it (ha!), is there anything I could to do to recycle it? I've heard of the old school bakeries that do crumb cake turn baked goods back into the crumb (I worked at such a bakery that turned old danish into part of the crumb), but I'm not sure how to go about doing this. And I'm not sure if I can recycle the crumbs in this fashion- maybe just the cake part.
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First cut up cake into strips or shred in a food processor and dry them first. The cake dries easier in long narrow strips on a rack and then run thru a barrel grater. What ever works for you. Once dry use them at will. Use to dust the cake pans or fold into batters....as or with nut fillings in rolls, streusel, etc. Look up cake crumb recipes or bread crumb recipes.
Do you recommend I take off the crumb topping or can I use it whole as you described?
I would remove it. If the crumb topping can be dried I would dry it along with the cake. I would remove jam or frostings.
For moist crumbs and immediate work up ... Check into "cake pops" I believe many of the recipes make use of moist cake crumbs. Most are "no-bakes." They can be decorated and sold and, at the same time be yummy display items. You can also give them away to customers. Here is one link... have fun!
You can also push samples of your cake while it is still cake. Wrap in cellophane or paper and add a ribbon for "carry out."
word "crumb" going on here!
I'm no pro, but my thoughts on this are:
- The "crumb topping" (American version of streusel) that makes this a "crumb cake", may or may not be re-usable. It really depends on what it is made up of, and what the ratio of sugar / butter / flour in it is. It isn't so likely to go "stale", but I would suspect that it would be far too sweet to grind it up and use it in the batter of future cakes or other baking. I would recommend removing it from the cake and dealing with it separately. I wouldn't see any reason to not re-use it as a portion of the next "crumb topping" required --- or to incorporate it in as a portion of a streusel / crumb topping on another confection that sells more quickly.
- The cake itself can be dried out as suggested by Mini Oven, and then grated in to "cake crumbs". These can be used in all of the ways that she mentioned (just as the danish "crumbs" were re-used in your former bakery). Since they are already sweetened / flavoured, they could throw off the texture (the "crumb" of the cake) as well as the flavour if used as part of a new cake recipe, but would certainly work as part of a quick bread / spice cake / muffin sort of thing if used as part of the "flour" portion.
I hope that this brings a "crumb" of clarity to things!