Lately, I’ve had several sayings or phrases rolling around in my brain 🧠 One of them is “I can do hard things”, which is good, because I can do hard things. A lot of hard things have been piling up for this upcoming month, so I’ve found that phrase to be pretty motivating, too. Go me!
Another phrase that has been very useful while unintentionally repeating in my mind is something I was taught in Kindergarten:
No, not that one, brain!!! Stop, drop, and roll has never ONCE been useful to me!
The other one! I meant the other one!
There it is! Maybe it’s because I live in San Francisco and we’re required to compost (I’m pretty sure I still put the wrong things in there 🤷🏻♀️), or maybe it’s because everything is so dang expensive here, but I’ve found myself repeating that phrase a lot (followed by “Waste not. Want not.”) and looking for ways to reuse items - or I suppose the more modern way of saying it is looking for ways to “upcycle” things.
Sometimes this habit makes me look like a lunatic and I’m truly worried that I’ll backslide into becoming my grandmother by reusing the plastic bags that bread comes in, but sometimes it makes me look like a genius - like when I traded out storing my leftovers in plastic wrap for reusable beeswax wraps! Today, we’ll focus on the genius aspect of this trait.
I’m sure you remember my wine glass cake from last month and the dilemma I faced from carving the cake into the correct shape then dealing with all of the cake trimmings. Also I’m sure you remember my strong feelings about the texture of cake balls, which is the number one way to reuse leftover cake.
Fortunately I came across a method for turning leftover cake scraps into a different type of cake - a cake roll! (Remember my pistachio roulade from the second episode of Baking and Boozing?)
This method was so delicious and so handy that I’m going to share the recipe with you because I think you deserve it!
After I made that delicious wine glass cake, I stored all of my cake trimmings in a freezer bag and kept them frozen until I decided to make this cake. Because I used a 6” round cake and an 8” square cake to make the wine glass cake, I had more trimmings than I needed for this roulade, but it’s better that way as opposed to not having enough.
I melted about 140g of chocolate baking chips and poured it over my cake trimmings. Then I poured 240g milk (about 1 cup) into the cake trimmings and mashed them together a little with my hand.
SIDE NOTE: I used lactose free whole cow’s milk for this cake (it’s what I keep in my house and typically bake with), but since the whole point of the milk in this recipe is to moisten, feel free to use your preferred milk option. There are a lot of them these days, and you shouldn’t feel limited by this recipe.
I added them separately so that the cold milk didn’t seize up the warm chocolate and cause a mess. I kneaded the mixture together and added a few more handfuls of cake trimmings because the mixture felt too sticky to hold together.
Once I got it to the right consistency, I rolled out the mixture between two sheets of plastic wrap to flatten it out like a normal roulade base, peeled off the top layer of plastic, then piped in alternating chocolate and raspberry buttercreams as the filling. Using two types of filling is not necessary but I was trying to clear out the contents of my fridge and felt like this would be a good use for my leftover frostings. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
I then rolled my roulade, using the plastic wrap for support, and refrigerated the log until it became solid. To top it off, I made a ganache by heating 90g of heavy whipping cream to a simmer then pouring it over 55g of chocolate baking chips and whisking it all together until combined. I pulled my naked roulade out of the fridge and placed it on a baking rack with a sheet tray underneath it to contain the mess. To complete the cake, I poured the ganache over the top of the roulade and positioned the fresh raspberries in a row for some decor.
I placed the roulade back in the fridge to solidify the ganache, then brought the whole cake over to a friend’s house for a dinner party where it was well received, even for leftovers 😉
I hope this inspires you to look at your leftovers in a different way, especially your desserts! Let me know the unique ways that you “upcycle” your cake trimmings, fillings, and frostings in the comments below.
Happy eating, y’all!